What Is Segregated Witness (SegWit)?
It is time to get this party started! SegWit is an agreement implemented in the Bitcoin cyber currency community. It is also a soft fork in the Bitcoin chain and has been widely accepted by miners and users. So what does it all mean? In short, if you are running a node (a piece of software that helps keep the Bitcoin network stable), you need to upgrade your software by April 27th, or else your node will stop working. SegWit was activated as part of a hard fork on August 24th, 2017. The most important thing to note about SegWit is that it fixes transaction malleability, which has plagued miners and users for years. However, you do not need to worry if you do not want to upgrade your software. You will still be able to use Bitcoin just fine! It is confusing, but it is not that confusing. Segregated Witness (SegWit) is a proposal to improve Bitcoin implemented in August 2017. It allows for more transactions per block, which means lower fees and faster transactions.SegWit2x is a proposal that would include a hard fork months after the initial adoption of SegWit, creating two bitcoins. One of these versions would have SegWit, and one wouldn't, but both would be called "Bitcoin" and act as separate currencies. BIP 148 is another proposal that includes a user-activated hard fork and proposes implementing SegWit.SegWit is a soft fork, not a hard fork. SegWit is a technical improvement that allows more transactions to be processed simultaneously, making the network faster and more efficient. A hard fork is when developers propose changes to the protocol. If most users accept those changes, there will be two versions of that particular cryptocurrency, one for each side. The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) chain split from Bitcoin in August 2017 as an example of a crypto hard fork. Bitcoin Cash is the result of a hard fork.
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