By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 19th, 2024
Following the cancellation of the SegWit2x hard fork event this week, developers of the Bitcoin Classic scaling solution are now closing the project.
The team behind the bitcoin hard fork proposal has officially announced the shutdown of the project. According to the developers, another hard fork Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has reached objectives they wanted to implement.
Launched in 2016, Bitcoin Classic proposed to upgrade the bitcoin network by increasing the block size limit instead of realizing off-chain solutions. The idea, however, did not receive much support from members of the cryptocurrency community.
“When Classic started, the decision was to go for the lowest possible upgrade from 1 MB to 2 MB,” Tom Zander, release manager of Bitcoin Classic, explained in a blog post. “It would avoid any technical complications and would lower the bar so far that we could not logically go any lower. It was the last, best, offer for peace,” he said.
“Classic was right there on the front line when the Bitcoin Cash chain started, having the most up-to-date releases (8 releases in 2 months) and the best and easiest migration strategies for users to sell their Legacy coin for Cash coin,” Zander said.
While Bitcoin Cash continued its growth, proving its viability, “Bitcoin Legacy” remained stuck with 1 MB. This, Zander noted, meant that Bitcoin Classic has “fulfilled its promise”.
Meantime, the team believes that Bitcoin Cash will keep prospering, as in the next six years users will likely migrate from the original bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash and will get rid of “Cash”, calling it just Bitcoin.
“It is now up to you which chain will gain the most traction. It is now up to the next billion people to start to use Bitcoin Cash. In at most 6 months I’m sure we’ll just drop the “Cash” and call it “Bitcoin”,” Zander said in a blog post.
He also urged people running Bitcoin Classic to move to alternative wallets or nodes, adding that the project will be closed in a few days or weeks.
In view of the recent SegWit2X hard fork cancellation, Bitcoin Cash will likely get wider support as the only serious alternative to SegWit chain. Despite the fact the fact that the fork has been supported by some major exchanges, the developers of the SegWit2X solution suspended its implementation citing lack of consensus between the members of the community.
Bitcoin Cash launched earlier this year as a result of a hard fork implementation on August 1, 2017, that divided the bitcoin blockchain into two separate currencies. A few months since its activation, the digital currency has already escalated to the top five cryptocurrencies on the market.