Any change is always met with resistance, sometimes more fierce than expected. It is the same thing happening with Bitcoin XT now. Number of people opposing the adoption of Bitcoin XT, better known as Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 101 (BIP 101) is increasing.
Bitcoin XT was introduced more than a week ago by Mike Hearn, a bitcoin core developer and Gavin Andresen, the Chief Scientist at Bitcoin Foundation. It included BIP 101 to create a hard fork in bitcoin blockchain which can increase the bitcoin block size from existing 1 MB to 8 MB and double every two years.
The move to incorporate BIP 101 is being met with stiff resistance by many major mining pools on the bitcoin network. In order to activate BIP 101, a minimum of 75 percent of newly mined blocks are required by Bitcoin XT to initiate BIP 101, triggering block size increase. However, the number of blocks have just reached close to one percent. Only those bitcoins mined by Slush Pool currently have the message supporting BIP 101.
The falling bitcoin prices and lack of consensus among the Bitcoin community has got many major mining pools resist the adoption of BIP 101. There are few mining pools and bitcoin businesses which are still undecided about BIP 101 and they have refrained from doing anything actionable yet. From the looks of it, BIP 101 is not going to hit the 75% mark.
However, all is not lost for the bitcoin network yet. Even though BIP 101 is facing resistance and it is highly unlikely for it to be implemented, BIP 100 is receiving a lot of support from mining community as well. BIP 100 was proposed by Jeff Garzik and it lets miners vote for increase or decrease in block size. BIP 100 has already received the support of BTCChina, F2Pool and other mining groups.
Earlier BitPay, the leading bitcoin payment processor had expressed its support to BIP 101. It is still not clear about whether they are going to extend the same support to BIP 100 or not. However, what’s interesting is the fact that F2Pool and other mining groups supporting BIP 100 have voted for the block size to increase by 8 MB, which is same as BIP 101.