Antpool to Launch Beta Testing for Bitcoin Classic

01.02.2016

The continuing block size debate has entered a new phase following the announcement by Antpool concerning its forthcoming test run of Bitcoin Classic, which is considered one of possible solutions to the problem.

Jihan Wu, CEO at Antminer, tweeted:

Antpool will start to test Classic soon. There is 7day long holidays ahead, so it's likely after the holidays. One node only first.

— Jihan Wu (@JihanWu) February 1, 2016

According to him, the test run will follow a seven-days long holiday in China, and initially the experiment will use just a single node.

Bitcoin Classic is intended as a hard fork increasing block size to 2 MB. Earlier several major mining companies and pools, including BitFury, KnCMiner, Bitmain, and Genesis Mining, spoke in favor of that solution.

The key issue to the block size debate is network safety. Those criticizing Bitcoin Classic insist implementation of such solution involves too many risk factors.

The alternate option, so-called Segregated Witness, implies optimization of existing Bitcoin Core via soft fork. However, in the eye of general public, this solution is far from being optimal. Still, it has some supporters, including F2Pool, a mining pool with mining power comparable to that of Antpool. Some industry players, like GreenAddress wallet provider, have gone even further and stated that they were already implementing SegWit in their offerings.

The current situation can hardly result in some sort of consensus in the nearest future. However, considering size and influence of Antpool, Bitcoin Classic test run, should it prove successful, may cause other pools to support the solution as well.

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Tags: AntPool, Bitcoin Classic, Jihan Wu, SegWit