https://bitcoinist.com/segwit2x-revival-will-happen-soon/
In the land of Crypto, everything moves 100x faster than normal markets. As long as a blockchain can keep up with it's growth, everything is good.
But, not everything is going perfect for Bitcoin right now.
BTC, or Bitcoin Core, is facing a problem that has been trying the patience of many for quite some time. While BTC has a strong infrastructure built up around it, stronger than any other blockchain because it was the first mover, the legacy wallet addresses are still used in over 80% of the active network. Coinbase, Bitfinex and other large exchanges still use legacy Bitcoin addresses.
In their defense, it's not like the big exchanges can just flip a switch and start using Segwit addresses; roll-outs take a lot of time, money and bug checking before anything happens. Not to mention, they need to see an upgrade in action for a certain length of time before adoption. It's better for big exchanges to let hardware wallets and other small players try segwit first; that way, if something goes up in smoke the big exchanges are fine.
This is normal in any industry that needs 100% reliability across all it's networks. The US Navy still uses Windows xp. While Microsoft doesn't officially support that operating system any longer, the navy pays them millions to maintain the software for their specific needs, regardless if a newer operating system would add new innovation and capabilities.
It is sad to think that any users and/or holders of bitcoin would be under the illusion that Bitcoin Core has been completely upgraded to segwit. In truth, it never will be fully upgraded as there will always be legacy wallets out there.
The good news is that big exchanges anticipate switching to Segwit wallet addresses sometime in 2018. But for cryptoland, that is a very long time to wait.
So this begs the question: what in the world is B2X hoping to accomplish?
According to the article, upgrades would include:
- Increasing block size up to 4 MB
- Increasing the production rate of the block to 2.5 minutes
- Developing unique address format
- Implementing the function of recalculation of complexity after each block
- Implementing protection against repeated transactions
- Introduction of the X11 encryption algorithm
The works on the project are being continued. The team is planning to introduce the following changes according to their roadmap:
- Offline codes
- Support for Lightning Network, instant transactions
- ZkSnark
- Ethereum smart contracts
- Anonymous Transactions
As the project CEO, Jaap Terlouw, says: “Commission and transaction speed within the Bitcoin network reached inconceivable values. In the last month, the average commission of the network was 15 US dollars! While Bitcoin turns into a digital analog of gold, it is simply impossible to use it as a payment tool.
The team of developers is not going to replace the existing standard completely by introducing the hard fork – conversely, we want to create an advanced addition to the classic Bitcoin. The hard fork will happen on December 28th, 2017 at block 501451. The network is looking forward to this fork to become better.
When the fork happens, each BTC holder will reliably receive B2X in the ratio of 1:1. One more pleasant news is that each BTC holder will also receive the proportional number of Bitcoin of Satoshi Nakamoto that had been mined during the first year of the existence of Bitcoin network. Good reward for the commitment, isn’t it?
I don't see where this is all going, but B2X does sound promising.