Bitcoin Core developers are working hard on facilitating the future of Bitcoin. Several of the team members recently attended a meeting in China, where they touched upon blockchain consensus and open source projects, among other things. It is evident that there are still some technical hurdles to overcome before all Chinese miners get on board with the developers’ decisions.
An Important Event For Bitcoin Core
Ever since the block size debate has started, it has become apparent that Chinese mining pool operators would need a fair amount of convincing. Unlike the rest of the modern world, Internet connectivity in China is not the fastest, and providers have put troublesome data caps in place. Making blocks look large would cause significant issues, that much is certain.
But with the release of Segregated Witness, most of the issues were resolved rather quickly. A minor block size bump that should suit the network needs, won’t cause major issues for Chinese mining pools. It turns out, however, that things may be a bit more complicated than that, as there are still a lot of questions waiting to be answered.
This is part of the reason why several Bitcoin Core team members attended the event in China this week. It is unclear what the topic of discussion was, but pictures have surfaced on Twitter about a presentation. From what we can tell, this presentation pertains to blockchain consensus, an important part of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
More importantly, it remains unclear if this event helped clarify some of the lingering questions related to the future of Bitcoin Core development. Most of the focus is on Segregated Witness right now, and the solution receives quite a lot of support from the overall Bitcoin community. But once SegWit activates, a new roadmap needs to be made for the future, and the Chinese mining community needs to be able to accommodate any significant changes.
It is evident that China plays a critical role in the future of Bitcoin, mainly because the majority of network mining power is located in that part of the world. Without that support, the network cannot advance properly, which would cause a new set of issues. Reaching consensus is a beautiful thing, but getting there can take far longer than needed, in some people’s opinion.
At the same time, there are some community members who are not surprised about Bitcoin Core members attending this event. It is not uncommon to see some representatives at a Bitcoin or Blockchain event, that much is true. But a presentation about Bitcoin in front of a Chinese crowd has to mean something. The only question is what.
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