{"id":24284,"date":"2017-02-24T21:47:39","date_gmt":"2017-02-24T21:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe7a00022697"},"modified":"2017-02-24T21:47:39","modified_gmt":"2017-02-24T21:47:39","slug":"bitcoins-capacity-increase-segregated-witness-could-kick-fast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/technical\/bitcoins-capacity-increase-segregated-witness-could-kick-fast","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin\u2019s Capacity Increase from Segregated Witness Could Kick in Fast"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>
<\/figure>\n

Segregated Witness<\/a> (SegWit) is a proposed soft-forking<\/a> change to the Bitcoin protocol that, among other things, increases capacity of the network. In addition to an estimated doubling<\/a> of the block size limit, SegWit is also viewed as a key improvement for layer-two solutions such as the lightning network<\/a> and TumbleBit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the key criticisms of SegWit up to this point has been the fact that the increased capacity enabled by this upgrade is not implemented as soon as the change is activated; however, it\u2019s now looking much more likely that SegWit could offer a nice bump in capacity shortly after activation.<\/p>\n

It should be noted that this critique of SegWit\u2019s increase in the block size limit looks at Bitcoin only from a bird\u2019s-eye view. On an individual user basis, the benefits of increased capacity are seen as soon as the user upgrades. In other words, it\u2019s unclear if the \u201cslow\u201d nature of SegWit\u2019s increase to the block size limit on a macro level even matters.<\/p>\n

Why Segregated Witness Is Not an Instant Block Size Limit Increase<\/strong><\/p>\n

The reason that it was originally thought that Segregated Witness would not offer much in terms of increased capacity right out of the gate is that wallets, exchanges and other creators of transactions must also complete their own upgrades before the benefits of SegWit could be seen on the network. <\/p>\n

Since each user must effectively opt in to the increased capacity offered by SegWit, the growth in capacity would be seen when users start using SegWit transactions rather than when the protocol change is initially activated.<\/p>\n

It should be noted that some Bitcoin Core contributors have downplayed<\/a> the amount of time it would take for service providers to implement SegWit-related changes into their own software.<\/p>\n

Another common argument against the capacity increase offered by SegWit has been that none of the in-progress lightning networks are ready for production use. While there aren\u2019t any bitcoin wallet providers that have implemented lightning payments in their own software, Lightning Labs did recently release an alpha version<\/a> of their lightning network daemon.<\/p>\n

Work is also progressing on an implementation of TumbleBit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Major Wallet Providers Are Ready for Segregated Witness<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the issue of SegWit\u2019s slow block size limit increase was first raised over a year ago, many different companies and projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem<\/a> have become SegWit-ready or are at least prepared to implement the change if and when it is nearing activation. Perhaps most notably, Blockchain.info<\/a>has implemented the necessary changes<\/a> to allow their users to make SegWit transactions once the change is activated.<\/p>\n

\n

.@kyletorpey<\/a> inch up to activation & all can push blocksize to ~2MB. silver lining to drama\/delay: more segwit ready, more scale out of gate<\/p>\n

— Adam Back (@adam3us) February 18, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n