We may see some significant enhancements to the Bitcoin code soon as the developers over at Bitcoin Core have announced Segregated witness (segwit) will be released soon. After much experimentation with the testnet, it seems the upgrade is close to the finish line and ready for adoption.
Segwit is a proposal that segregates transaction signatures enabling the elimination of malleability , and a capacity increase to the network in general. This means the “new-style blocks” can possibly and modestly improve transactions times and the amount of data filling blocks. The new protocol changes consensus rules when applied to full validation nodes across the network’s ledger. Segwit transactions and blocks are arranged in a different manner than what most are used to and with this implementation users “can both relay segwit data to segwit nodes and older-style data to older nodes.” Bitcoin Core developers explain the changes within the latest announcement via the team’s blog : “These combined changes to the consensus rules and the P2P networking code consist of 1,486 lines of added or modified code. The segwit patch also includes an additional 3,338 lines of added or modified code in the unit and integration tests that help ensure segwit is functioning as expected on every full build of the Bitcoin Core program. In addition to over 3,000 lines of added automated testing code, segwit has been extensively tested by Bitcoin developers. This section describes just some of the rigorous testing they performed on different versions of segwit over the last year.” Anticipation for segwit has been quite enthusiastic as it has added some confidence within the community as testing was established this past week. Many wondering if it will be fully upgraded before the halving day approaches as miners will have to show consensus. The implementation of segwit […]
