Segwit's defining feature is its ability to compress transaction data, thereby reducing fees by between 30 and 40 %, but Coinbase has been conspicuously absent
from the Segwit party.
While fees
from SegWit addresses are lower, many major wallet providers and payment processors still do not support it, worsening value - for - money for users and businesses transacting in Bitcoin.
SegWit is a soft fork side chain for Bitcoin; you can send Bitcoin
from SegWit addresses to normal Bitcoin addresses and vice versa; the best part is when you send Bitcoin from a SegWit address to another SegWit address the fees are 6x cheaper and confirmations are 6x faster too.
This led to an increased block limit and made it different
from Segwit Core.
This fork, called SegWit2x or Bitcoin2x, was supposed to take all the good stuff
from the SegWit - improved Bitcoin blockchain and upgrade on it by increasing the block size to 2Mb.
These were the first steps to ensure activation of Segwit2x as per the New York Agreement within six months
from Segwit activation.
In addition, you can still send bitcoin
from a SegWit wallet to a legacy wallet and vice versa since the transactions are still taking place on the same blockchain.
But when users spend the bitcoins
from the SegWit addresses later on, the protocol upgrade is utilized.
Aside
from SegWit, there are other «creative» solutions that also promise to end the bitcoin scaling debate.
Bitcoin has already benefited in terms of user experience
from SegWit, with fees as low as 1 satoshi per byte now standard.
Similarly, Mycelium told Bitcoin Magazine it has been implementing new features which diverted some time and attention away
from SegWit.
The extra space of 1 megabyte in the block can be utilized by the transaction only if it is sent
from a SegWit address (output) to another SegWit address.
This is not very surprising: Hardware wallets stand to benefit
from SegWit more than most wallets, as it helps to significantly speedup the signing process.
Payments
from SegWit wallets have a different transaction format than non-SegWit transactions.
That's why we have put in the work to make our payment processing service fully compatible with bitcoin transactions
from SegWit wallets.
Not exact matches
The problem is that some developers are now saying
SegWit can do the same thing, and are backing away
from the scheduled implementation in November.
In order to prevent invalid transactions
from reaching your service, you must configure your Bitcore node to only connect to a boundary node which supports the new
Segwit rules.
Based on independent research
from Dr. Craig S. Wright, and Bitcrust, and Dr. Peter Rizun, I no longer believe
SegWit is an acceptable compromise.
The way that
segwit works is as follows: the data involved in the transactions gets separated
from the signature.
It was later found out that actually one of the transaction's inputs suffered
from transaction malleability (the issue that
SegWit, the proposal favored by Core, is said to resolve).
Vitalik additionally clarifies an announcement made about LN and BCH
from Samson, saying that
SegWit is required.
In addition to slightly increasing the capacity size of blocks,
SegWit also solves the problem where a receiver could intercept and modify the sender's transaction ID in a bid to get more coins
from the sender.
SegWit is the process by which the block size limit on a blockchain is increased by removing signature data
from Bitcoin transactions.
The controversial
SegWit adoption of Aug. 8 removed signatures
from bitcoin blocks, allowing for more room and more speed for transactions.
1/2 hey @CalvinAyre, if you could add a disclaimer that you're funding CSW before spreading
SegWit FUD
from a fraud, that would be great pic.twitter.com / cYPSfkJFXt
All on - chain transactions sent by this wallet are
segwit transactions, thus benefitting
from a fee discount compared to legacy transactions.
Of course, because
segwit is fully backward compatible, our wallet can send / receive transactions to /
from all bitcoin wallets, even non-
segwit ones.
If wishing to upgrade, Ledger users can recreate the same account naming and structure on the
SegWit branch and move funds
from the legacy branch to the
SegWit branch by doing a normal bitcoin transaction.
Wu's stance echoes a broader opinion
from the Chinese community in particular that
SegWit creates unnecessary complexity within Bitcoin.
Users can access a new
SegWit address or legacy addresses (where current funds are stored) when starting the Bitcoin Wallet Chrome application (
from v1.9.0).
While Bitcoin is benefiting
from the increased
segwit adoption in the network and the relentless downward drift of Bitcoin Cash, drift the rest of the majors are losing ground today after a quiet weekend, pushing the market share of the largest coin back above 50 %.
For bitcoin,
SegWit requires agreement
from 95 % of the network, whereas litecoin requires 75 %.
The founder of Ethereum held an open lecture in the Moscow Digital October centre sharing his thoughts on the system's advance, lessons learnt
from TheDAO attack and
SegWit vs BU dilemma.
For now, though, it will mine on
Segwit2x chain, though it said it «will immediately shift all company resources to supporting Bitcoin Cash exclusively» if the block size increase part of
SegWit, scheduled for roughly three months
from now, falls through.
Today,
SegWit is just a couple of steps away
from activating on bitcoin, but some bitcoin users are unhappy about the outcome.
Vitalik also clarifies a statement made about LN and BCH
from Samson, saying that
SegWit is required.
Our block explorer, Blockchain.info, has supported
SegWit from the day it activated.
Segwit2x is a hybrid of the solutions proposed above: It implements
SegWit followed six months later by a hard fork increase in the block size limit
from 1 to 2 MB.
Big decisions like
SegWit implementation are still on the horizon for bitcoin, but that hasn't prevented mainstream investors
from
Big decisions like
SegWit implementation are still on the horizon for bitcoin, but that hasn't prevented mainstream investors
from continuing to hear about its benefits and unique properties.
With the rise of hashrate, support for
Segwit dropped
from 80 percent to a new low of 70 percent.
Due to its early and ongoing support of Bitcoin Cash, which it began interacting with before giving users upgrades such as
SegWit with which they could benefit
from lower fees, commentators have often publicly hit out at the company.
The group announced that Segregated Witness (
SegWit), a proposed change in Bitcoin's code that changes the way that data
from Bitcoin transaction signatures are stored, will continue to be developed and released in the next two months.
A bad
SegWit bug could turn Bitcoin Cash into «The» Bitcoin, but until now it has yet to really distinguish itself
from the crowd of altcoins.
On the opposing side,
SegWit advocates got plenty of ammunition
from Roger Ver, the ex-American, ex-Bitcoin multimillionaire (and living counterargument to libertarianism) who was one of the most famous, and unlikeable, advocates for Bitcoin Cash.
SegWit has received a positive reaction
from members of the Bitcoin community after being presented by Dr. Pieter Wuille, Bitcoin Core developer and one of the founders of Blockstream, at the Scaling Bitcoin conference in Hong Kong three months ago.
OXT.me,
from bitcoin data analysis expert going by the moniker LaurentMT, tracks the total number of
SegWit transactions made per day.
Complexities raise
from that point, as it stays conceivable
SegWit won't not be enacted under specific situations attributable to how Bitcoin Miners may run the code.
SegWit basically means to remove the signature
from the transaction and lighten the weight of a transaction, in order to create more space in a block.
And, as we confirm
from Bitcoin's daily transactions history, investors are, in fact, embracing
SegWit with open arms.