Wiki / Events / New York Agreement

New York Agreement

From the Bitcoin Takeover Wiki · ✓ 8 sources · 2 podcast anchors · built 2026-11-13

The May 2017 industry deal to activate SegWit at 80% and hard fork to 2 MB within six months, which became SegWit2x.

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The wiki's angle: the deal split in two. The miner-signalled SegWit half went through within weeks; the hard-fork half collapsed. The last common block before Bitcoin Cash even carried a /NYA/ coinbase tag.[4][6]

Contents

  1. Terms
  2. Signers
  3. The SegWit half
  4. The 2 MB half
  5. Heard on Bitcoin Takeover
  6. References

Terms

The agreement committed signers to support two parallel upgrades based on the Segwit2Mb proposal: activating Segregated Witness at an 80% threshold signalling on bit 4, and activating a 2 MB hard fork within six months[1]. As of 25 May 2017, DCG said the group represented 58 companies in 22 countries and 83.28% of hashing power[1].

Signers

The supporter list included Bitmain, Bitcoin.com, BitPay, Blockchain, BTCC, Coinbase, F2Pool, ViaBTC and Xapo, plus Gavin Andresen and Guy Corem as individuals[1]. DCG later noted that BitGo had been erroneously included in the initial list[1].

The SegWit half

BIP-91 implemented the 80% bridge: miners signalling bit 4 in 269 of 336 blocks would make SegWit signalling mandatory, starting 1 June 2017[2]. SegWit locked in from block 479,808 and activated at 481,824 on 24 August 2017[3]. The last block shared by Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, 478,558, was mined by BTC.com with a /NYA/ tag in its coinbase[4].

The 2 MB half

The hard fork was scheduled for block 494,784 under the SegWit2x name and suspended on 8 November 2017[5][6].

Heard on Bitcoin Takeover

When Vlad described him as part of the agreement on S17 E43 (September 2026), BitGo CEO Mike Belshe replied: “I was not part of the New York agreement, by the way.”[7]

Later in the same episode he said: “I guess they put BitGo's name on the New York agreement without my permission once, after I explicitly told them not.”[8]

References

  1. primaryDigital Currency Group, “Bitcoin Scaling Agreement at Consensus 2017”, Medium, 23 May 2017 (Wayback Machine copy)
  2. primaryBIP-91 (Reduced threshold Segwit MASF) [archived]
  3. btkBitcoin: All the Hard Forks and Soft Forks (BTCTKVR: Forks!) [archived]
  4. btkBitcoin Cash: The Big Block Breakaway (BTCTKVR: Forks!) [archived]
  5. primarysegwit2x.github.io, “Bitcoin Upgrade at Block 494,784” [archived]
  6. primaryMike Belshe et al., “Segwit2x Final Steps”, bitcoin-segwit2x mailing list, 8 Nov 2017 (Wayback Machine copy)
  7. episodeS17 E43: Mike Belshe on the New York Agreement▶ listen at 1:13:17timestamp transcript-derived, pending a listen [archived]
  8. episodeS17 E43: Mike Belshe on BitGo's name on the New York Agreement▶ listen at 2:08:40timestamp transcript-derived, pending a listen [archived]

Related

SegWit2x
The planned 2 MB hard fork that was meant to follow SegWit under the New York Agreement, suspended a week befo
Hong Kong Roundtable
The February 2016 meeting where miners and some Core contributors agreed SegWit first, then a roughly 2 MB har
UASF (BIP-148)
The 2017 user-activated soft fork that threatened to reject non-SegWit-signalling blocks from 1 August 2017.
Jihan Wu
Co-founder of Bitmain, a signer of the 2016 Hong Kong Roundtable statement whose company backed the 2017 New Y
Gavin Andresen
Satoshi Nakamoto's successor as Bitcoin's lead developer, author of BIP-101 and BIP-109, and later a casualty
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