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Rival factions amongst developers are poised to adopt two competing software updates (which could split the currency in two) at the end of the month. The dispute centers around bitcoins identity as either an asset (like gold) or a payment system. Bitcoin's lack of a central authority has made compromise difficult.
Still, after previous counter-proposals championed by Wu fell through, miners last month agreed to compromise and support SegWit, in exchange for increasing the block size. Wu says the plan will alleviate short-to-medium term congestion and give Core enough time to flesh out a long-term solution. That proposal is what is known as SegWit2x, which implements SegWit and doubles the block size limit. “You can think of the SegWit2x proposal as an olive branch,” said Wu. Support for SegWit2x has reached levels unseen for previous solutions. About 85 percent of miners have signaled they are willing to run the software once it’s released on July 21, and some of bitcoin’s largest companies have also jumped on board.
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