CACaliforniaKarl·Jul 20, 2017
This web site looks like a good dashboard! Although, I'm not up on the technical details of everything going on here, so some of it is confusing to me, because there's not as much background as I'd like.
I've spent some time reading around, and here is my guess as to what the site is describing:
Behind the scenes, achow101 (https://github.com/achow101) is running four Bitcoin clients:
* `Bitcoin Core` is running the client from https://bitcoin.org/en/ (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin) (https://bitcoincore.org). This client does not support Segregated Witness, and it does not support larger block sizes (so blocks larger than 1 MB are ignored).
* `UASF (BIP 148)` is running the client from https://bitcoinuasf.org (https://github.com/UASF/bitcoin). This client supports Segregated Witness. This client does not support larger block size
Read the rest
s (so blocks larger than 1 MB are ignored).
* `btc1 (segwit2x)` is running the client from https://segwit2x.github.io (https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin). This client supports Segregated Witness, as well as changing the block size to 2 MB (blocks larger than 2 MB are ignored).
* `Bitcoin ABC (UAHF)` is running the client from https://www.bitcoinabc.org (https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc). It supports blocks of <8 MB in size (initially defaulting to 2 MB). This client does not support Segregated Witness.
As I understand things, right now there are two events which have hard-coded dates:
* At midnight UTC on August 1, the `UASF (BIP 148)` client will fork, in that it will start ignoring new mined blocks which do not support Segregated Witness.
* At 12:20 UTC on August 1, the `Bitcoin ABC (UAHF)` client might fork. I say might because the fork will be triggered by someone mining a larger-than-1-MB block (the "trigger block") on or after 12:20 UTC. (1 MB is the largest block that the `Bitcoin Core` and `UASF (BIP 148)` clients will recognize). At that point, `Bitcoin ABC (UAHF)` nodes will treat the "trigger block" as valid, and the fork has occurred.
Also, there is another event which may take place, depending on various conditions:
* If—sometime soon (before midnight UTC on August 1), and for a long-enough period—enough people indicate support, then the `btc1 (segwit2x)` node will fork with the `UASF (BIP 148)` node (in that both nodes will start supporting Segregated Witness). Sometime after that fork, the `btc1 (segwit2x)` node will fork off into its own fork, which will have support for 2 MB blocks.
And of course, there is one event which will happen at some point:
* `Bitcoin Core` will release a new version, adding support for Segregated Witness, or for a different block size, or both. `Bitcoin Core` nodes, when they upgrade, will then join one of the forks.
Anyway, I _think_ that's right, but this has gotten really complicated, and I'm trying to skip over the specific details, and the rationale (since, as tempay mentioned, that's been discussed recently).
If I misunderstood something, please let me know!