Bitcoin SegWit Transactions Now in Majority, Over Half of BTC Transactions Use Segregated Witness

SegWit Transactions Take Up Over 50% of Total Bitcoin Transactions

The percentage of Segregated Witness (SegWit) Bitcoin spending payments saw a third major spike this year as the total percentage jumped to over 50% this Thursday.

The last 24 hours has seen a spike in the transactions made on the SegWit as the percentage jumped by over 10% in a day from under 43% to over 53.82% during this period. The spike seen becomes the largest spike seen on SegWit transactions since February this year when the price increased from 15.58% to over 29% in 36 hours. Comparing the increase to that of May, which caused a frenzy within media houses, the latter increased from 29% to 43% in 48 hours.

Chart showing the spikes in SegWit transactions since 2017 (Screenshot: Transactionfee.info)

SegWit technology was introduced to reduce the overall transaction fees of transactions on the Bitcoin network as well as enabling faster payments across the network. The overall adoption rate of SegWit has been volatile in 2018 but gradually improved.

Coinbase support for Bech32 SegWit

Coinbase exchange announced their support for the Bech32 SegWit last week, becoming part of the high profile exchanges to follow the trail. More exchanges are expected to follow as hardware wallets take up the protocol as well i.e. KeepKey hardware wallet latest update will include the compatibility feature of SegWit protocol.

SegWit Scalability Debates

SegWit has however not been smooth sailing through as some quarters of the Bitcoin community still hold particular disagreements over implementation of the protocol.

The adoption of SegWit has raised particular questions amongst holders and users of BTC. These recent developments on the Bitcoin platform have received their fair share of criticism and praise in the BTC community. Remembering the SegWit implementation was the cause of the hard fork of Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

The new format of SegWit addresses, Bech32, is specified in Bitcoin Improvement Protocol BIP 0173. These improvements over the Bech32 model will impact adoption of ‘wrapping’ coins P2SH-format addresses

Bitcoin wallet provider BRD states that,

“The fact that Bech32 isn’t backwards compatible can actually be used as a tool to speed up adoption, […] If we can rapidly establish Bech32 as the default address format, and discourage the use of P2SH addresses, we can create a temporary rift where senders are obliged to upgrade their software in order to serve receiving customers.”