
Segwit2x Backers Cancel Plans For Bitcoin Hard Fork
SegWit2x backers cancel plans for bitcoin hard fork Founder Gym aims to help underrepresented startup founders build techstartups Advocates for a bitcoin hard fork have now decided to cancel plans for the so-called SegWit2x fork . The bitcoin blockchain was supposed to split into two blockchains in roughly 8 days . But it looks like SegWit2x backers couldnt convince enough people in the bitcoin community to make the SegWit2x blockchain the new mainstream bitcoin blockchain. The SegWit2x fork should have increased the block size to 2 megabytes. This change could have helped when it comes to bitcoin scalability. But it has always been a controversial change and many bitcoin companies have not actively supported the move. So many feared that this fork could have split the community into two branches. Although we strongly believe in the need for a larger blocksize, there is something we believe is even more important: keeping the community together, the note says. Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for a clean blocksize upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path could divide the community and be a setback to Bitcoins growth. In other words, in order to keep the community together, SegWit2x backers have decided to call off the fork. The announcement has been signed by BitGos Mike Belshe, Xapos Wences Casares, Bitmains Jihan Wu, Bloqs Jeff Garzik, Blockchains Peter Smith and Shapeshifts Erik Voorhees. They all met in person earlier this year in New York to agree on this two-part plan. The first part was a bitcoin update called Segregated Witness . This soft fork already happened back in August. With SegWit, data is stored differently in each block it leads to some nice bitcoin features. First, the SegWit updates improves the tran Continue reading >>

Bitcoin Segwit Update The Coinbase Blog
We wanted to give our customers an update on Bitcoin Segregated Witness (SegWit) transactions: we are planning to implement SegWit in 2018. We are prioritizing security and performance over newfeatures In terms of our engineering priorities, securely storing customer funds remains our top priority. Our next priority is to ensure that our platform remains performant during periods of peak volume. Following security and performance, we are focused on adding new features for our customers. Many of our customers have been asking for SegWit, and were working out a way to implement this upgrade safely. We store billions of dollars worth of bitcoin on behalf of customers and any change to our infrastructure is done with significant planning and consideration for the security and stability of our platform. For those unfamiliar with SegWit, this upgrade helps reduce the size of transactions, which improves the overall transaction capacity of the Bitcoin network. This upgrade should also help reduce the fees customers pay on bitcoin transactions. You can read more about SegWit here . We will share additional updates with our customers as we get closer to launching this feature. Note: the SegWit upgrade is different than Bitcoin SegWit2x . Continue reading >>

Just Segwit? Bitcoin Core Is Already Working On A New Scaling Upgrade
Just SegWit? Bitcoin Core Is Already Working on a New Scaling Upgrade Oct 12, 2017 at 08:00 UTC|UpdatedOct 12, 2017 at 20:12 UTC Bitcoin's core developer team isn't yet done scaling the cryptocurrency's protocol. Despite the fact that a years-in-the-making change called Segregated Witness ( SegWit ) activated on the network just over six weeks ago (with businesses and users now slowly updating and average block sizes inching upward ), the upgrade has already started a chain reaction of work on other optimizations geared toward accommodating more users. So, while businesses and miners are pushing for more aggressive scaling via the controversial Segwit2x proposal , the open-source team behind bitcoin's most widely used software is focused on other efforts entirely. Called "Schnorr signatures," the technology offers another signature scheme option alongside Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA). One benefit is that it supports "signature aggregation" on the bitcoin blockchain. While that may sound complex, the change aims to consolidate activity that already takes place on the network with each transaction. Under the ECDSA scheme, each piece of a bitcoin transaction is signed individually, while with Schnorr signatures, all of this data can be signed once. And doing so could improve bitcoin in a few key ways, according to developers working on the effort. Blockstream engineer Jonas Nick told CoinDesk that this method of mashing signature data together should be considered "low-hanging fruit for helping bitcoin scale." First, by decreasing the number of signatures, it increases the amount of transaction data that can fit into each block. Second, by merging signatures, the technology could enhance privacy by making it harder to determine where transactions are Continue reading >>

Bitcoin Fees Are Falling Amidst Greater Segwit Adoption
Bitcoin Fees Are Falling Amidst Greater Segwit Adoption Transaction fees, a bugbear for many in the bitcoin community, are on their way down. Spiraling fees were a contentious issue that reached fever pitch in the twilight of 2017. But with the dawn of a new year, bitcoin has been blessed with reduced fees, set against a backdrop of increased Segwit adoption. Also read: Peter Thiel, Bitcoin Astronaut, Moves Markets with Crypto Moonshot Fees Have Halved from Their December Peak After spending the final quarter of 2017 ramping up, transaction fees on the bitcoin network have finally begun to decline. Bitcoinfees.info indicates an average fee of $15.79 to have a transaction mined within the next six blocks, rising slightly to $16.54 for the next three blocks and $17.29 for the next block. The median withdrawal fee from exchanges such as Bitfinex this week has been closer to $14 however. While $14-$16 is still more than many people would like to spend, its an improvement at least over the $30 bitcoin fees that were reached during December. Estimatefee.com quotes an average of 358 satoshis/byte to move a transaction within the next six blocks. The number of transactions in the mempool waiting to be confirmed is now below 90,000, from a peak of over 115,000 on December 30. The average cost per transaction in $ has dropped considerably. In the last 24 hours, Localbitcoins.com and BTC.com have added Segwit support to their wallets. In a blogpost, mining pool and bitcoin wallet provider BTC.com wrote: As a BTC.com wallet user, you will experience a drop in the transaction fees and faster transaction times when you send bitcoin to another address. It has now added this functionality to both its mobile and desktop wallets. Peer-to-peer exchange and online wallet Localbitcoins.com Continue reading >>

Bitcoin Core :: Segregated Witness Adoption
The following is a list of companies and software projects that are ready or preparing for segregated witness . To add your company or service, please submit a pull-request . Segwit Ready: 94, work-in-progress: 26, planned: 23 1 BitGo provides wallet services to exchanges such as Bitstamp and Kraken. 2 GreenAddress provides wallet services to TheRockTrading exchange, BitBoat and CoinBR. To add your company or service, please submit a pull-request . Continue reading >>

How Segwit Made For A More User-friendly Bitcoin
How SegWit Made for a More User-Friendly Bitcoin By Joe Liebkind | Updated November 16, 2017 9:15 AM EST Who is Garrett Camp, Uber Founder and Crypto Inventor? On August 8, the Bitcoin network reached the level of consensus needed to adopt Segregated Witness (SegWit). The bitcoin improvement proposal (BIP) that contained the SegWit software component had been released in June, at which point minersspecial computers that confirm, verify and record transactions on the bitcoin networkgradually started signaling support for it. Samson Mow , chief security officer at Blockstream, a Canadian company building Lightning Network solutions said on the day of lock-in: Today is a great day. SegWit has locked-in and paved the way for years of permissionless innovation. Lightning Network will be a real game changer. The function of SegWit that so interests its supporters, is that it removes transaction signatures from bitcoin blocksthe batches of transactions that are approved every ten minutes. This increases room for transactions by about 60%, reducing the time users wait for transactions to be approved. It is supposed to make using bitcoin cheaper, faster and more secure. Before final activation, miners and nodes in the network installed the new version of the bitcoin core software that implements the improvements. Ordinary users of bitcoin dont need to take any steps, as the changes will be completed through the software upgrades made by the miners. For the ordinary user, their wallet applications will work fine, though their wallet service may upgrade for more compatibility. George Basiladze, founder and CEO of Cryptopay , a bitcoin wallet, payment processor and bitcoin debit card provider, - and about to launch its ICO soon - stated prior to the launchthat users should expect Continue reading >>

Segwit - Wikipedia
Segregated Witness, or SegWit, is the name used for an implemented soft fork change in the transaction format of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin which has also been implemented on currencies such as Litecoin , DigiByte and Vertcoin . The formal title "Segregated Witness (Consensus layer)" had Bitcoin Improvement Proposals number BIP141. [1] It is intended to solve a blockchain size limitation problem that reduces Bitcoin transaction speed. It does this by splitting the transaction into two segments, removing the unlocking signature ("witness" data) from the original portion and appending it as a separate structure at the end. [2] The original section would continue to hold the sender and receiver data, and the new "witness" structure would contain scripts and signatures. The original data segment would be counted normally, but the "witness" segment would, in effect, be counted as a quarter of its real size. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a form of money using cryptography to keep transactions secure. [3] Each record of a unit of Bitcoins is called a "block", and all blocks are tied together sequentially by using a cryptographic hash on the previous block and storing in the next. This forms a chain of blocks, or a blockchain. [4] Each block of bitcoins contains information about who sends and receives a given unit of bitcoin (a transaction), as well as the signature that approves each transaction. Originally, there was no limit to the size of these blocks. But this meant that malicious people could make up fake "block" data that was very long as a form of Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Their fake blocks would be detected, but doing so would take a very long time, slowing down the whole system. [5] The solution Satoshi designed was to put a limit on block size, which was 1 MB Continue reading >>

Segwit Is Coming To Coinbase And Bitfinexs Bitcoin Exchanges
SegWit is Coming to Coinbase and Bitfinexs Bitcoin Exchanges Today, two of the worlds largest cryptocurrency investment platforms, Coinbase and Bitfinex , both announced that they were adopting support for Segregated Witness (SegWit) protocols for bitcoin (BTC) traded on their exchanges. In its announcement , Bitfinex stated, The SegWit implementation means Bitfinex users can benefit from lower BTC withdrawal fees (approximately 15 percent) and improved processing times on transactions across the Bitcoin network. The exchange did make clear that the support for bitcoin deposits and withdrawals using pay-to-script-hash (P2SH) SegWit addresses were the only ones thus far slated for bitcoin and not applicable to bitcoin cash (BCH). Coinbase, on the other hand, tweeted that it had finished testing for SegWit for Bitcoin. It will phase in the launch, with the goal of targeting a 100% launch to all customers by mid next week. Coinbase affirmed its plan for a 2018 SegWit implementation on December 15, 2017 and seemingly delivered on the SegWit statements it made on February 13, 2018. Reasons for the support of using SegWit addresses are clear. Prior to the activation of the Segregated Witness soft fork in August 2017, there were concerns about the scalability and malleability of Bitcoin due to the size limit of the blocks and a potential manipulation of the transaction ID. These concerns had been a source of debate for years until the soft fork allowed for protocol upgrades to the software. While many hard and soft wallets already adopted support for SegWit protocols, the move by both companies is huge given the volume of bitcoin traded on each platform. At the time of this writing, both Bitfinex and Coinbases exchange, GDAX, accounted for nearly one tenth of global bitcoin t Continue reading >>

Coin Dance | Bitcoin Block Details
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