- SegWit helps Bitcoin by making the transactions less bulky and making it more scalable.
- Major crypto platforms like Binance and BitMEX are yet to adopt SegWit.
On September 15, Bitcoin payments leveraging SegWit reached its highest – 50.47%. The Segregated Witness (SegWit) removes signature data from the transactions, making it less bulky. In the process, it enables Bitcoin to become more scalable. During 2018 and early 2019, SegWit adoption numbers on Bitcoin blockchain were not high. According to “transactionfee,” on January 1 of 2019, Bitcoin transactions using protocol accounted for 40.55%. However, in the last nine months, an increase of 24.46% was witnessed.
Bitcoin failed to gain support initially as 95% support from network miners was required and these miners seemed to be hesitant. Despite its activation at block 477,120 on 21 July 2017, the backward-comparability nature of the scaling upgrade held back its adoption on the Bitcoin network. This implied that the non-upgraded users were still able to use their existing full node software.
Though major wallet providers have welcomed the upgrade, it has failed to be adopted by more of the leading crypto exchanges. Exchanges like Binance, Blockchain.com, BitMEX, and Bittrex have not yet implemented SegWit. They already have a considerable client base and do not mind paying the extra fees.
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