Mining Pools Signal Support for Bitcoin Unlimited

On March 17, 2017, despite the recent catastrophic bug that had crashed 70% of Bitcoin Unlimited nodes, several large mining pools including ViaBTC, BTC.TOP, and others continued signaling their support for Bitcoin Unlimited's larger block approach over Bitcoin Core's Segregated Witness proposal. This persistent support from significant portions of the mining hashrate indicated that the scaling debate remained far from resolved, and that many miners remained ideologically committed to direct block size increases regardless of the technical setbacks Bitcoin Unlimited had suffered.

The ongoing support reflected deep divisions within the Bitcoin ecosystem about its technical direction and governance.

The mining pools' continued support for Bitcoin Unlimited was driven by several factors beyond just technical considerations. Many large miners, particularly those based in China, were concerned that SegWit's transaction structure changes would reduce their fee revenue and complicate their mining operations. Some miners also distrusted Bitcoin Core developers, viewing them as having too much power over Bitcoin's direction and being too conservative about scaling.

Additionally, miners had invested heavily in hardware optimized for the current Bitcoin protocol and worried that Core's development roadmap might obsolete their equipment. The fact that miners continued supporting Bitcoin Unlimited despite its obvious technical problems demonstrated that this was as much a political struggle over Bitcoin's governance as a technical dispute about the best scaling approach.This persistent division would ultimately lead to the New York Agreement and eventually to the creation of Bitcoin Cash in August.