BIP91 LOCK-IN NOW

BIP: 91
Layer: Consensus (soft fork)
Title: Reduced threshold Segwit MASF
Author: James Hilliard [email protected]
Comments-Summary: No comments yet.
Comments-URI: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/wiki/Comments:BIP-0091
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Created: 2017-05-22
License: BSD-3-Clause
CC0-1.0

Bitcoin traders all over the world have kept a close eye on the BIP91 lock-in schedule. Considering how this lock-in required over 80% of the network’s hashing power to unite behind this solution, there were no guarantees a consensus could be reached anytime soon. In a surprising turn of events, the vast majority of mining pools came together and signaled for BIP91 to secure this scaling “solution” would be locked in place. Late last night, the threshold for locking in the BIP was met, and we are currently in a grace period before the network will reject non-SegWit blocks.

Although there are people who don’t care about which scaling solution “wins” in the end, one cannot deny the impact this proposal has had on the overall community. After months of bickering and political shenanigans, the mining community finally agreed for a change. Although not every mining pool signaled for locking in BIP91, there was plenty of hashpower in favor of this solution. As we discussed before, BIP91 is designed to make SegWit2x and the upcoming user-activated soft fork compatible, rather than cause a potential blockchain split.

Even before this threshold was met, the Bitcoin price started showing signs of an upcoming bullish rally. We reported on the sudden price momentum in yesterday’s article, even though one could not factor in the BIP91 lock-in at that point. Even though it appeared reaching the required number of blocks would be a trivial matter, there is never a reason to get ahead of oneself. All it took was one major mining pool to suddenly stop signaling for BIP91 and the lock-in threshold would not have been met. Thankfully, those mind games were not present, for a change.

Maintaining this bullish Bitcoin price momentum will not be easy, though. It all depends on how quickly we can activate Segregated Witness on the network. Right now, that seems to be a matter of a week or two, yet things may change over the coming days. Segregated Witness will pave the way for the Lightning Network as well, which will introduce faster and cheaper Bitcoin transactions. The future is looking very bright for Bitcoin right now, assuming the community doesn’t fall apart in the next few weeks.