November Hard Fork: Segwit2X Suspended Indefinitely

The Bitcoin hard fork which was scheduled to occur around Nov. 16 following a proposal called SegWit2x, which would have split the digital currency in two has been suspended indefinitely until there is more agreement in the bitcoin community. This occurred after more and more major bitcoin developers relinquished their support for the upgrade in the last few months.

This news was announced few hours ago by Mike Belshe, the CEO and co-founder of bitcoin wallet software provider BitGo, who is also one of the leaders of the segwit2x project in a SegWit2x mailing list which was also signed by other prominent leaders of the project; Wences Casares, Jihan Wu, Jeff Garzik, Peter Smith and Erik Voorhees. Mike stated that;

Our goal has always been a smooth upgrade for Bitcoin.  Although we strongly believe in the need for a larger blocksize, there is something we believe is even more important: keeping the community together.

Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for a clean blocksize upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path could divide the community and be a setback to Bitcoin’s growth. This was never the goal of Segwit2x.

However, the group still hopes the block size will be increased further down the line, once there is more consensus from stakeholders. It was stated in the mail that;

As fees rise on the blockchain, we believe it will eventually become obvious that on-chain capacity increases are necessary. When that happens, we hope the community will come together and find a solution, possibly with a blocksize increase. Until then, we are suspending our plans for the upcoming 2MB upgrade.

It has been a very controversial long ride for the community and this would obviously die down the fears among the users. This news made the SegWit2x opponents to celebrate the news on social media and Charlie Lee, Litecoin boss, believes this would enable the community to work together towards scaling safely.

The Bitcoin price also fluctuated hugely immediately the news went round, hitting an all time high of $7,879.06, according to CoinDesk. Do you think this would help greatly in improving the legacy chain, while the scaling problem is easily solved? Let's view your thoughts in the comment section below.