In our recent article we offered a brief overview of Bitcoin XT, block size debate and more. We also mentioned about Slush Pool, the Czechoslovakian mining pool which has implemented support for Bitcoin XT mining. While a significant percentage of blockchain community is currently out there supporting the Bitcoin XT fork and in turn supporting the block size increase. However, the Chinese bitcoin mining pools have refused to adopt the system.
While talking to Bitcoin Magazine, Wang Chun from F2Pool, the largest bitcoin mining pool based out of China mentioned that the mining pool is not going to accommodate Bitcoin XT, which is also known as BIP 101. Being the largest bitcoin mining pool currently out there, F2Pool controls over 20 percent of the total hashing power contributed to the Bitcoin network. Wang Chun believes that it is unnecessary to increase the block size to 8 MB from the present size of 1 MB as proposed by Bitcoin XT.
Given the rate at which Bitcoin network is spreading, the 8 MB block size can wait for at least a couple of years until demand reaches to that extent. Meanwhile, a mere 1 MB increase in block size will be more than enough to sustain any immediate demand for bigger block sizes. However, Wang Chun hasn’t denied the need for an increased block size as a need of the hour.
Bitcoin XT was introduced by former Bitcoin Core lead developer Gavin Andresen along with ex-Googler Mike Hearn. Bitcoin XT proposes an 8 MB increase in block size, which doubles every two years.
The debate on increasing the block size has been going on for a while now. Until the bitcoin community reaches a consensus and votes for it, none of the Blockchain Improvement Proposals (BIPs) are going to be implemented.