The number of working Bitcoin Classic nodes is constantly growing. It has passed the threshold of 1500 and is now approaching 1600, although the majority still sticks to Bitcoin Core protocol.

Of the roughly 6.5 thousand bitcoin nodes almost 1600 support the Bitcoin Classic protocol, which is about one quarter. Initiated in January, the Classic version began to gain noticeable support early in February. Since then, it has been showing almost constant growth, except for a short fall on 27 February.

However, the number of nodes supporting Core, which has so far been the mainstream version of bitcoin, hasn’t shown any decrease either for that period of time, remaining above 4,000. Therefore, the recent rapid increase of Classic supporters must be closely connected with the growth of the overall number of nodes.

Bitcoin Classic implies an immediate hard fork transition to the 2MB block. Core developers, in turn, demand a soft fork: staying for the time being with the current 1MB block, employing the SegWit protocol, which would optimise data allocation within blocks, and only switching to a larger block size in 2017, according to the Hong Kong Consensus.

The growing popularity of the Classic solution correlates with rising concerns within the community about the current condition of the bitcoin network and possible consequences if improvements are not made soon. Indeed, the adjustments proposed by the Core team are, from the point of view of Classic supporters, too slow. With the increasing use of the cryptocurrency, bitcoin blocks are nearly full and transactions become slower. The developers should also keep in mind the coming halving of the mining reward, reminds Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, a strong opponent of the Core project. Core supporters might finally bring the community to a situation when mining will not bring any profit any more, says the expert.

In the meantime, the community is trying to reach consensus over the blocksize debate, but neither opinion has got convincing support so far. No agreement has been reached at the Satoshi Roundtable, the recent meeting featuring, among others, the Hong Kong Consensus members. Some of the Roundtable attendees don’t, in fact, want any block size increase, believes chief scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation Gavin Andresen. The way out is yet to be found.  

Andrew Levich