Bitcoin and allocated gold order book exchange Vaultoro has withdrawn support for the New York Agreement (NYA), citing the absence of opt-out replay protection from the proposed SegWit2x hard fork.
Vaultoro Withdraws NYA Support
Vaultoro co-founder Joshua Scigala made the announcement on Twitter, stating that the company had signed the NYA to “help dislodge the stalemate” between the different camps in the scaling debate.
“It worked,” he said, because “we now have segwit.” Scigala is referring to Segregated Witness, the scaling solution that was activated on the bitcoin network in August.
2) As any good businessman, I stick to my word / signature and would have followed through with 2x but I cannot without replay protection.
— Vaultoro J.Scigala (@Vaultoro) September 26, 2017
He added that he was prepared to follow through with his word and support the SegWit2x hard fork in November, but he cannot do so in good conscience considering that SegWit2x developers have thus far denied requests for them to implement opt-out replay protection into the project source code.
The Replay Protection Debate
The subject of replay protection has been hotly debated between proponents of Bitcoin Core and SegWit2x. Core supporters argue that since SegWit2x is forking away from the main bitcoin blockchain, its developers should include replay protection. What replay protection essentially does is help computers on the network distinguish between the two different versions of bitcoin, more or less separating them into two distinct cryptocurrencies. Without replay protection, an attacker can broadcast a transaction on multiple blockchains, potentially stealing money from an unsuspecting user.
SegWit2x supporters maintain that their version of bitcoin will be the true bitcoin, so they have stated their aversion to separating bitcoin into two distinct cryptocurrencies. SegWit2x developer Jeff Garzik has proposed opt-in replay protection, but this would require users to manually activate the protection and has been criticized as “useless” by opponents.
CCN reached out to Vaultoro for clarification about whether they will support SegWit2x again if replay protection is implemented, but they did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Vaultoro joins a growing list of NYA signatories who have withdrawn support for the hard fork. Bitwala announced in August that it considers the Core blockchain to be the true bitcoin, so they will only accept the fork if Core decides to support SegWit2x. F2Pool has stated they only agreed to support the NYA through July; they currently still signal for SegWit2x, but they say this will change the next time they update their pool servers. Finally, web content platform Yours withdrew NYA support and decided to launch its service on the bitcoin cash blockchain.