Over the past few weeks, support for the Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) proposal has increased significantly. This is due to a bunch of smaller mining pools collectively running the alternative client that removes the current block size cap. Now its seems the proposal will get even more hash power as the Chinese miner, Chandler Guo, has announced that his new mining pool will support the BU protocol.
Also read: Smaller Pools Are Diversifying the Bitcoin Mining Industry
Chandler Guo Reveals Bitcoin Unlimited Support
All eyes have been focused on two Bitcoin protocol proposals that many hope will help the network scale into the future. Currently, the Segregated Witness (Segwit) implementation has 23.3 percent of support from mining pools, and this percentage has been hovering in this range for quite some time. Meanwhile, BU has steadily gained 22 percent of mining pool support, and its adoption rate has increased considerably over the past two months.
Mining pools such as Viabtc, BTCtop, GBminers, and more have been expressly pushing the BU protocol forward. As BU support has been gaining momentum, on February 6 the Chinese miner, Chandler Guo, surprisingly announced that his new pool would support the BU client. Guo says the official announcement of his X pool embracing BU will come later in the day, but the news has already spread like wildfire.
Chandler Guo to raise 12mil ETC for a new 100P BTC pool; 21mil XBTC coins to be issued during ICO. "The pool will signal Bitcoin Unlimited"
— cnLedger (@cnLedger) February 6, 2017
X Pool Aims to Capture 3.3% of the Bitcoin Network
According to a translated post on the Chinese forum 8btc, Guo says he plans to raise 12 million Ethereum Classic (ETC) in order to add 100 petahashes to his X Pool Bitcoin mining operation. It seems the plan is to start an ICO consisting of 21 million tokens that will be issued to the public. The additional hash power would give Guo’s X Pool roughly 3.3 percent of the overall Bitcoin network. At press time, X Pool encompasses roughly 0.9 percent of the network’s hashrate distribution.
Voting with Hash Power
Over the past month or so, the block size debate has been polarized by the choice between Segwit and BU. Lots of discussions have been taking place between Bitcoin community members across various forums concerning which is the best solution for scaling. Segwit support has been seemingly stagnate for a while now as the soft fork’s mining pool backing percentage hasn’t moved very much. On the other hand, BU support has grown because some of the smaller mining operations have been gathering more hash power. Over the past week, the mining pool Viabtc’s hashrate has increased significantly, capturing 10-12% of the network.
It’s going to take some time watching this hashrate voting procedure unfold, and consensus is still far off the beaten path. However, people are taking action as things move along and something is sure to come out of these protocol proposals and subsequent discussions. If Chandler Guo’s X Pool adds 3.3 percent of the network hashrate towards BU, the client will be one step closer to accomplishing its goal.
What do you think about Chandler Guo supporting Bitcoin Unlimited with his new pool? Let us know in the comments below.
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