Bitcoin Forum

While there are disintegrating views on its upgrade for Bitcoin miners, the proposal to use SegWit – or Segregated Witnesses – on Litecoin first and then make an evaluation of its feasibility on Bitcoin has been welcomed by major industry insiders. Aside that, it is also being seen as beneficial to the Litecoin market as an alternative to Bitcoin in major markets.
The Litecoin SegWit soft fork will start signalling on block number 1145088 in a couple of hours. The idea is that since Bitcoin miners remain deadlocked, Litecoin’s deployment of SegWit could make its value rise due to utility and this may probably make miners reconsider their positions.

http://news.8btc.com/litecoin-banking-on-segwit-activation-to-realize-vision-as-bitcoins-alternative

F2Pool currently controls around 43% of the Litecoin network hashrate and they stated that they are planning to upgrade to SegWit. Since Segregated Witness for LTC requires only 75% of the network hashrate to be activated it seems very likely this is going to happen.
And then we have to wait and see what it will be of LTC  :)

Those that can't innovate -- copy.

Outside of "washing" coins, litecoin doesn't have a compelling use-case, and its price reflects that.

it'll be interesting to see what happens but it's only ever gonna be purely experimental unless ltc gains some real use, which it deserves. a lightning network on a network which is already virtually unused feels a little pointless.

I'm totally with you on this but can we deny that, for the time being, it would be better for everyday spending to have the chance of using Litecoin with faster confirmations? I'm starting to see it this way: LTC for everyday use, BTC long term wealth management.

 ;)

Sidechains are more suited to micro-transactions. It will take time, but I think that will be the direction to take.

I like the idea of Litecoin being used as testing ground for SegWit but we don't know if litecoin's users will accept this evolution.
SegWit is not really that needed for Litecoin anyway. Unlike Bitcoin, LTC has no problems with confirmation times and high transaction fees.

Segregated Witness Benefits https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits/ (https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits/)

Litecoin indeed doesn't need segwit, but if just as happened with Bitcoin it begins to boom when it comes to mining, then even Litecoin will see its block times being far less frequent than is the case right now. Litecoin on its own is pretty much useless beside for speculation purposes. From that point I can understand that they want to put segwit to test via Litecoin. But then again, testing segwit is step one, getting enough support to activate segwit for Bitcoin, is a whole different level of achieving.

Many people believe that LTC is a test field for bitcoin.

The two coins can't really be compared: different uses, different volumes etc.
LTC has never seen much stress like BTC did. Yes, I do agree that LTC is a good testing ground but I will not go further.  ;)

Hmmmm, maybe a better strategy would be to do the testing on Bitcoin itself?

Maybe there should be, I dunno, maybe a specific Bitcoin Testnet, and the Segwit fork should be rolled out and tested on that for at least a year? ::)

It must be like that, because there is no way that Litecoin can actually benefit from a better update when there is barely any real network usage. At first I was a bit skeptic, but it may turn out to be a more than great testing opportunity if there is enough support among pools to reach consensus. Unlike the amateurish BU software, I don't really expect much to go wrong with SegWit. Only thing that is working against us are the pools that play hard to get when it comes to giving SegWit a fair chance.

As a "Segwit for BTC" supporter but also a coin-agnostic cryptocurrency user, I am interested in tracking the adoption of this improvement in all cryptocurrencies. I think all of them can benefit from it, and be it only for the purpose to fix transaction malleability. And indeed I think it's more probable that BTC could adopt Segwit if a larger altcoin like LTC already adopted it and there wasn't any trouble with the soft fork.

People interested in "the whole picture of Segwit in cryptocurrencies" can go to my thread about altcoins and Segwit adoption (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1777136.msg17727063#msg17727063). There is already an altcoin that adopted it (Groestlcoin / GRS) and the soft fork seemed to have happened flawlessly - although obviously it's a very small cryptocurrency and its network should not be too complex, so for BTC it maybe is more of a challenge. But it can be a first precedent for LTC and then also BTC adoption.

Still Segwit support among Litecoin miners seems to be low (http://litecoinblockhalf.com/segwit.php) (2,8 % at this moment - should be around 4-5% at the end of the first period), but I think it's too early to draw conclusions - F2Pool and other large players may be just working on it.

Nice summary, Groestlcoin is the only activated one?  Any user feedback?

As far as I know, yes. The next altcoin (apart of LTC) that is about to start the signalling phase seems to be Vertcoin - just yesterday they have published the version which enables SegWit, although they describe it still as a "pre-release". Vertcoin-SegWit (https://github.com/ahmedbodi/vertcoin/releases/tag/Vertcoin-SegWit).


In the GRS thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=525926.4280) they wrote that all worked without flaws - no other particular user reactions. The Groestlcoin forum has very low activity and Segwit is not even mentioned :-/

My understanding is sidechains are secured via the parent blockchain hashing power. Which is why it makes sense. Then the side-chain can have different ratios of value to the main chain, and in effect "fill the gap" for lower-end purchases.

As it is not atomic on chain, every interface invents new risks. Just very simple to understand.

Any actual transaction via segwit, I heard that the address format is different.

Here's one from 2015 -- https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/13/down-the-blockchain-rabbit-hole/