Antpool, the world's second largest mining pool, has supported Bitcoin Classic and starts testing its beta version.

“Classic has released beta version, code changes made mainly by Gavin. Antpool will start testing Classic,” Antminer CEO Wu Jihan wrote on his Weibo page, referring to one of the main blocksize apologists Gavin Andresen.

The draft BIP recently proposed by Andresen provides for a hard fork network upgrade which would increase the total amount of transaction data permitted in a block from 1 to 2Mb.

On 23 January, Chinese miners reached a consensus on 2 Mb increase. Their decision differs from Andresen's plan only in terms of the percentage of supporters required to execute the hard fork. While Andresen believes 75% to be enough, Chinese miners argue that the fork requires the support of at least 90% of bitcoin’s mining community.

Earlier in January bitcoin developer Mike Hearn blamed Chinese mining pools for their reluctance to increase block size:

“Why has the capacity limit not been raised? Because the block chain is controlled by Chinese miners, just two of whom control more than 50% of the hash power. At a recent conference over 95% of hashing power was controlled by a handful of guys sitting on a single stage. The miners are not allowing the block chain to grow,” Hearn wrote.

The developer argued that bitcoin digital currency “failed” due to the failure of the community.

Maria Rudina