ViaBTC Briefly Overtook Antpool As The Second Largest Bitcoin Mining Pool

Not too long ago, the ViaBTC mining pool started testing the Bitcoin Unlimited block size solution. Although there was no official plan to switch to this option on the mainnet anytime soon, the pool is seeing a healthy influx of new miners. So much even that it become the second largest Bitcoin mining pool less than 24 hours ago.

ViaBTC Is On Everybody’s Radar

One thing is for sure: ViaBTC is a Chinese mining pool people want to keep an eye on. Even though Antpool reclaimed the number two spot a few hours ago – according to blockchain.info stats – things are looking quite good for ViaBTC. Not too long ago, they were “only” the sixth largest mining pool for Bitcoin.

Things started changing quickly when the operators announced testing of Bitcoin Unlimited. Although this testing does not warrant an official mining implementation of this alternative development branch, it got a lot of people excited. ViaBTC is one of the few pools openly showing some support for Bitcoin Unlimited right now.

At the same time, there are still a lot of questions regarding the support for Bitcoin Unlimited. A lot of people are not too keen on increasing the Bitcoin block size in such a drastic way. On the other hand, a lot of miners either don’t seem to care or aren’t interested in showing their support for any solution being developed right now.

Over the past few months, various large Chinese mining pools have remained on the sidelines during this debate. While the operators attended the Scalability events, they are not showing any signs of attempting to address the problem. A fair few miners are fed up with this lacklustre attitude, and the switch to ViaBTC seems to confirm those suspicions.

All in all, this is a very interesting turn of events for a mining pool just over two months old. While there is no guarantee they will switch to Bitcoin Unlimited, keeping an open mind is winning over a lot of miners. Thankfully, not every mining pool operator has grown complacent.

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