Mow Revives Bitcoin XT Warning Amid Governance Battle

Bitcoin governance is facing another contentious debate as Samson Mow, CEO of JAN3, draws parallels between current tensions and the failed Bitcoin XT campaign. In a recent post, Mow argued that the BIP101 proposal, which would have increased Bitcoin's block size limit, was promoted by Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn to miners after Core developers rejected it.

BIP101 proposed a hard fork requiring 75% miner signaling, sparking concerns that it could divide the network before broader agreement. The proposal aimed to lift Bitcoin's one-megabyte block limit to eight megabytes in January 2016, with the maximum increasing by doubling every two years until reaching 8.192 gigabytes by 2036.

The issue at hand is whether miners can trigger major rule changes without wider consensus. Mow was directly involved in the debate in 2015 as BTCChina's chief operating officer, stating that Chinese miners would reject Bitcoin XT without developer agreement.