F2Pool: We Were Never Against SegWit. Wait…

Earlier today, Wang Chun, the owner of F2Pool, the second largest Bitcoin mining pool in the world, clarified that he was never against the activation of Bitcoin Core’s Segregated Witness (SegWit) on Litecoin.

Chun stated:

“Please let me do Charlie Lee a favor and clarify: I was never against SegWit on Litecoin.”

Just a few hours later, Chun offered a completely opposing stance on SegWit to his previous statement. What are Chun’s intent and motive? During an interview in February, Chun reaffirmed that F2Pool is pushing the activation of SegWit on Litecoin to observe its impact on overall scaling, on-chain capacity expansion and providing an infrastructure for two-layer solutions. At the time, Chun planned to support SegWit on Bitcoin upon the activation of SegWit on Litecoin.

Since then, Chun has emphasized his opposition to the Bitcoin Unlimited software and its team, due to multiple bug exploitations and the software’s instability. However, Chun has since expressed his concern over the Bitcoin Core development team as well.

In a rather conflicting statement, Chun wrote to Cointelegraph’s journalist:

“I've tried my best to love Core. But Core doesn't love me. Now I know Charlie Lee has a backup plan and it is called UASF.”

Chun’s criticism of Bitcoin Core came as a surprise to the Bitcoin community as he previously explained that Greg Maxwell, a Bitcoin Core developer, helped make his decision to support SegWit on Litecoin. It is highly likely that Maxwell introduced the benefits and advantages of activating SegWit and Chun agreed to observe the solution’s effect on Litecoin prior to implementing it on the Bitcoin network.

Currently, Chun is not in support of SegWit on Bitcoin, Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited. He went as far as to encourage developers to find an alternative solution to SegWit since the majority of miners are not willing to accept SegWit as a scaling solution. “If the majority of the miners say no to SegWit, developers must find an alternative solution,” Chun said. Over the past week, a new solution called Extension Blocks was introduced by Bitcoin startup Purse’s BCoin. However, the community doesn’t seem to be convinced as of yet that Extension Blocks is the answer to Bitcoin scaling.

Based on the current trend, a user activated soft fork (UASF) is likely, considering that some of the largest businesses and companies within the Bitcoin industry already expressed their support toward UASF. Throughout this month, Chun has changed his stance on SegWit and Bitcoin scaling in multiple occasions. On April 6, Chun stated that he decided to reconsider SegWit on Litecoin. While Chun has been offering ambiguous statements to his followers and to the Bitcoin community, it is still likely that Chun will change his stance on SegWit on Bitcoin if the solution is activated properly on Litecoin.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor