Development status active Operating system | Written in C++ | |
Initial release 10 February 2016; 11 months ago (2016-02-10) Stable release 1.2.0 / 5 January 2017; 35 days ago (2017-01-05) Repository github.com/bitcoinclassic | ||
Bitcoin Classic is a fork of the Bitcoin reference implementation Bitcoin Core aiming to increase the transaction processing capacity of Bitcoin by increasing the block size limit. Blocks, which are a form aggregated transaction data, form the basic structure of the immutable blockchain. Bitcoin Classic started out as similar to, though less aggressive than, the Bitcoin XT fork, which never managed to get the support it needed. Bitcoin Classic in its first 8 months promoted a single increase of the maximum block size from one megabyte to two megabyte. In November 2016 this changed and the project moved to a solution that moved the limit out of the software rules into the hands of the miners and nodes.
Contents
Bitcoin Classic is also an attempt to move technical governance of the Bitcoin project from the developers of Bitcoin Core to a voting process involving a larger community of miners, businesses, developers and users. There is no formal activation method for the software, but due to the nature of Bitcoin a supermajority needs to support it.
Blockchain bottleneck
In Bitcoin, transactions are collected into blocks, and each block is produced by the bitcoin network on average every ten minutes. With Bitcoin's current limit of one megabyte, this capacity translates to an estimated average of three transactions per second. With Bitcoin Classic's proposed doubling of the block size limit to two megabytes, the maximum transaction rate would also roughly double. If deployed, Bitcoin Classic would render current Bitcoin software obsolete, as it changes protocol parameters, namely increasing the maximum block size from one megabyte to two megabytes. Most implementations of Bitcoin software would require small modifications to the block size limit in order to continue to work.
Reception
Bitcoin Classic has received support from Bitcoin companies, developers, investors and miners, such as Coinbase, Bitstamp, Circle, Jeff Garzik, Roger Ver and Gavin Andresen. The Wall Street Journal said "Bitcoin Classic has emerged from the ashes of the XT versus Core debate. It is a version of Bitcoin that would allow for a two-megabyte limit. It appears to be quickly winning support." However a hard fork was not seen as an urgent issue by the wider bitcoin community. The software's peak use was observed in early 2016 with a steady decline in usage from March 2016 onwards.