SegWit2X Bitcoin Hard Fork is Finally Here

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During 2017, we have lived different Bitcoin hard forks. Among these we can mention Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin Cash. But there was one hard fork that was cancelled, known as Segwit2x. Now it has happened at block number 501451 mined on December the 28^th. The hard fork was announced by the official SegWit2x twitter account an hour later.

The Long Awaited Launch of New Bitcoin SegWit2X Fork Finally Took Place! pic.twitter.com/GC46rYFoOI

— Segwit2X (@Segwit_2X) December 28, 2017

What is Bitcoin SegWit2x?

Bitcoin SegWit2x was a proposed forked that was later cancelled due to the lack of support from the Bitcoin community. SegWit stands for Segregated Witness. This is a protocol in the blockchain that allows transactions to be smaller in size. That means that every single block can process more transactions without upgrading the block size.

The data involved in the transactions gets separated from the signature, allowing transactions to reduce their size. That creates more space in the block, and more transactions can be processed. But SegWit2x does not only mean to apply the Segregated Witness to the network, but also to increase the block size to 2 MB. In this way, with bigger blocks and smaller transaction size, fees would be reduced and transactions would be faster.

SegWit2x Cancelled

The SegWit 2X hard fork was expected for November the 16^th, but it was cancelled. This hard fork was cancelled on November the 8^th.

Mike Belshe, the CEO of BitGo commented:

“As fees rise on the blockchain, we believe it will eventually become obvious that on-chain capacity increases are necessary. When that happens, we hope the community will come together and find a solution, possibly with a blocksize increase. Until then, we are suspending our plans for the upcoming 2MB upgrade.”

Revival

The official webpage communicates that the fork has happened on December the 28^th.

“Commissions and transaction speed within the Bitcoin network has reached extraordinary values. It is almost impossible to use it as a means of payment. Our team will carry out the Bitcoin hard fork, which was planned for mid-November. At the same time, trading of its futures has been carried out on some exchanges for a long time,” says Jaap Terlouw, Founder of the project.

Among the new features it will include the X11 encryption algorithm. Block size increase up to 4 MB, high block generation rate (2.5 minutes), replay protection, recalculation of complexity after each block and unique address format. Many of these features were not included in the old version of the SegWit2x hard fork.

“I promise that all BTC holders will receive not only B2X in the ratio of 1 to 1, but also a proportional number of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoins as a reward for their commitment to progress,” Mr Terlouw commented.