The Hard Fork Freeze: Why SegWit2X Crashed and What Follows

The past few days saw nervousness and expectations surrounding a potential rogue SegWit2X hard fork. Exchanges and wallets had prepared for several scenarios, including a listing of a minority chain, if it had any viability.

But forking Bitcoin turned out to be a non-trivial exercise, which in the case of SegWit2X actually froze the network of nodes.

Firstly, the block number that circulated for months, 494,784, turned out to be wrong. Because theSegWit2X rogue forkcounted from zero, the first block of the new blockchain would have to be 494,783. If SegWit2X had happened, exchanges and wallets may have been off by a block when taking a snapshot- not a fatal thing, given that few users move their funds just at the time of a hard fork.

But it seems for the SegWit2X attempt, block 494,783 was never actually mined, and according to thisfork tracker, the network is forever frozen at block 494,782. A bug in the BTC1 software made it impossible for miners to produce the first 2MB block.

“Real#Bitcoinis the best bitcoin. The segwit2x fork was tried, and failed lol. This was predicted by the coinbase team: FUD is over!https://t.co/DczaG9ZSJHpic.twitter.com/eXEZlDIbFl”

The SegWit2X fork was supposed to use BTC1 nodes, of which there are 97 right now, according to CoinDance.

When the official SegWit2X team revoked the fork a few days ago, a rogue group still tried to launch it, causing the nodes to freeze. Miners were incapable of supporting the chain, and so far, no new blocks have been produced. It is not impossible that with the code available, a SegWit2X blockchain may exist in some form, but so far, no block has been produced. Forking Bitcoin is always possible, but whether it is viable is a matter of organization and support from the miners and the potential users.

At the moment, a project called BitcoinX claims it would produce a SegWit2X enabled coin, similar to the one intended for November 16-18. It is unknown if any such asset is being mined.

But it is still possible that other organizations try to fork Bitcoin for profit, in lieu of an ICO, and even have a pre-mined bounty program similar to that of Bitcoin Gold.

Since the failed attempt at a fork, Jeff Garzik, one of the leaders of the SegWit2X fork, released a software patch that could hypothetically help miners produce the larger block- but so far, there are no signs of activity or of miners actually interested in producing the new blockchain and the new digital asset.

The news of the fork finally becoming impossible, at least for now, are giving a boost to Bitcoin, which continues to rise, with recent prices of $8,025.