From Coindesk
Attention this week has so far focused on a group of bitcoin users that successfully split off the blockchain to form their own cryptocurrency.Read more here: https://www.coindesk.com/uasf-revisited-will-bitcoins-user-revolt-leave-lasting-legacy/But fascinating as the real-time market creation of Bitcoin Cash has been, for those who have closely watched developments, August 1 marked another lesser-acknowledged milestone – the passing of the deadline for a controversial scaling proposal Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 148.
That's when a vocal group of users had scheduled a so-called "Independence Day." The goal was to push through a long-stalled coding optimization called Segregated Witness (SegWit), designed to increase and redefine the network's capacity. The software upgrade would find node operators (users who store transaction history) initiating the move, hoping to lead the way for miners and startups.
And while it's faded a bit into the background, you could argue that, even amidst a busy season for scaling proposals, BIP 148 was perhaps the most influential.
The scaling "agreement" Segwit2x followed soon after, proposing to add a feature that BIP 148 wouldn't have provided: a boost to the block size parameter. Bitcoin Cash was even more explicitly a response to BIP 148 – hence, why both were scheduled for the same day.
But those two proposals had one other thing in common, and that was giving some degree of power over the software transition to the miners that secure the blockchain.
Before its introduction, for example, SegWit had stalled for months due to its reliance on the idea miners would signal support to activate the change. However, only about 25 to 50% of mining pools did so from November to June.
Then, suddenly, two weeks before the scheduled UASF, and with little time to spare, mining pools rallied around either Segwit2x or BIP 91 on its own, to activate SegWit.
UASF supporters don't see this as a coincidence.
Blockchain startup founder Ragnar Lifthrasir, a public UASF proponent, told CoinDesk:
"UASF worked as designed and predicted, it is activating SegWit."
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