Digital Currency Group CEO Barry Silbert has said miners equivalent to almost 80% of the Bitcoin hashrate support SegWit and 2MB blocks.
Having publicly stated his own preference for Bitcoin scaling, Silbert then reported he had signed up “over 50 bitcoin companies from ~20 countries” to support the same.
I'm pleased to share that over 50 bitcoin companies from ~20 countries have also signed on to support this compromise https://t.co/9sRXh145Y5
— Barry Silbert (@barrysilbert) May 17, 2017
Later Wednesday, Silbert confirmed “78.3%” of the total hashrate was now coming from miners wanting his scaling solution.
The findings gathered significant responses from the community, from which emerged more of the confrontational exchanges seen throughout the scaling debate.
“All it takes to get to 2MB is for wallets to support SegWit. If this is what the statement refers to, getting dev support will be easy,” core developer Eric Lombrozo commented, while ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees subsequently accused him of “diverting the initiative.”
A request for clarification from fellow entrepreneur Tuur Demeester as to whether Silbert was supporting a SegWit user-activated soft fork (UASF) or SegWit with a 2MB hard fork of the network appeared to be answered by core developer Peter Todd.
In a separate tweet, Todd appeared to challenge Silbert effectively to put his money where his mouth is.
“If [Barry Silbert] is serious, he should be talking about a UASF - he claims to have enough support to get even BIP148 implemented smoothly,” he wrote today.
If @barrysilbert is serious, he should be talking about a UASF - he claims to have enough support to get even BIP148 implemented smoothly.
— Peter Todd (@petertoddbtc) May 18, 2017
Comments on the exchanges also focused heavily on the size of the Bitcoin mempool, which currently contains almost $400,000 worth of unconfirmed transactions with an average amount of $2300.