Segwit2x Developers Set Date For Bitcoin Hard Fork At Block 494,784
Bitcoin developers behind the controversial Segwit2x fork which split the blockchain and produced a new Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency, have announced a set date for a second hard fork today. Segwit2x goal is to upgrade and increase bitcoin’s blockchain block size from 1MB to 2MB allowing for higher transaction capacities on the network.
Segwit2x developers plan to allow bitcoin miners to run the new software at block 494,784 on the blockchain which they predict will occur sometime in November 2017. The Segwit2x announcement is not yet public, but is expected to be released later today. The draft post is currently live on https://segwit2x.github.io/segwit2x-announce.html and reads:
"During the month of November 2017, approximately 90 days after the activation of Segregated Witnesses in the Bitcoin blockchain, a block between 1MB and 2MB in size will be generated by Bitcoin miners in a move to increase network capacity. At this point it is expected that more than 90% of the computational capacity that secures the Bitcoin network will carry on mining on top of this large block.
The upgrade to 2MB blocks has been agreed first during the Bitcoin Roundtable Consensus in Hong-Kong on February 2016, and then ratified by the Bitcoin Scaling Agreement in New Yorkon May 2017. These agreements stipulate the activation of Segregated Witness support and an increase of the maximum base block size from 1MB to 2MB.
Segregated Witness support has been locked-in as a soft fork expected to activate around August 23 2017 (block height 481,824). Bitcoin clients that are not currently SegWit-compatible and wish to benefit from the new type of transaction must perform extensive upgrades to various subsystems, including changes to transaction serialization, signature hash computation, block weight calculation, scripting engine, block validation, a new address scheme, and P2P protocol upgrades. Fortunately Segregated Witness compatibility is opt-in, and existing Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) wallets and full nodes are expected to continue working without changes after SegWit activates.”
The proposal or Segwit2x plan for a second hard fork of the bitcoin network could mean the creation of another and 3rd version of the bitcoin blockchain with its own cryptocurrency. The hard fork on August 1st produced a new cryptocurrency called Bitcoin Cash which is trading at $400 as of Aug 18 2017. It's uncertain how many bitcoin miners would switch and dedicate their computing power to another 3rd blockchain on the network!