The OFFICIAL SegWit Activation Thread

[talkbitcoin]

I'm guessing that this doesn't affect paper wallet as you just import the private key into a SegWit enabled wallet.

this was a backward compatible upgrade which means everything that was working before should continue to work after the upgrade (fork) too.
any paper wallet that was created before this fork is using the old keys and those keys are and will be valid forever. so the wallets should continue supporting it.

[figmentofmyass]

Now that SegWit  is activated let's watch how does it work with the transactions, and their fees. Hope it benefits BTC and it's users, so that the BTC can increase more in value.

SegWit makes sure that block sizes will decrease significantly in size, and from there it's assumed that the fees will go down significantly as well. I however would like to see it happen first, before I am going to believe it.

huh? it makes it possible for blocks to increase to 4MB at most (in the worst case scenario). that's a pretty significant increase. by addressing transaction malleability (and therefore making a large scale lightning network possible) we can maybe prevent future block size increases from being necessary. but they won't be decreasing.

Large benefit now that SegWit has been activated, is that the implementation of the Lightning Network is now closer than it ever was. This will ultimately result in even lower fees.

i'm excited for LN. i'm a little worried about the logistics of transaction routing, but even a hub-and-spoke model would be useful, since it's all trustless. if we just took everyone's bitpay and coinbase transactions offchain and into payment channels, that would be a huge optimization right there.

[reee]

segwit is activated, so why no >1MB block has been mined until now?

[buwaytress]

segwit is activated, so why no >1MB block has been mined until now?

Because SegWit has nothing to do with increasing the block size. Among others, it's a more efficient way to store data so that it takes up less space in the blocks. In other words, SegWit transactions are leaner (smaller) in size so you can fit more of them in the same 1 MB block. Looking at blockchain explorer now but can't quite see this happening yet. Give it some time, pretty sure most of the txs are not yet SW.

Is there currently any way you can tell just by viewing from blockchain explorer btw?

[squatter]

segwit is activated, so why no >1MB block has been mined until now?

Because SegWit has nothing to do with increasing the block size.

Segwit changes the 1MB block size limit to a 4MB block weight limit, so that's not true. It definitely allows blocks to have more data.

Among others, it's a more efficient way to store data so that it takes up less space in the blocks. In other words, SegWit transactions are leaner (smaller) in size so you can fit more of them in the same 1 MB block.

That's only if you don't account for witness data. Taken altogether, I'm pretty sure Segwit transactions are slightly larger than standard transactions. Future optimizations can make them smaller, though.

Looking at blockchain explorer now but can't quite see this happening yet. Give it some time, pretty sure most of the txs are not yet SW.

Block explorers are a mess right now if you try to look at a Segwit transaction.

[HTracer]

segwit is activated, so why no >1MB block has been mined until now?

It takes time while wallets and services switch to start Segwit output tx and thereafter it could bump to >1MB

[xFiber]

According to this site https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ the fees already have gone done quite a bit. I hope electrum releases their compatible cliënt soon. They already announced it on twitter so it shouldn't take too long for it to get out. Hopefully we will soon be able to enjoy low fees again.

[mirx]

Fees are 450 sat/byte for first block right now and growing. https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#8h

[BitcoinHodler]

Fees are 450 sat/byte for first block right now and growing. https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#8h

it is the effect of bitcoin cash, this time it was the cause of rising fees in bitcoin!
BCH presented miners with a golden opportunity to make a large amount of profit but only for a short period of time. surely like any logical person with a business would do, they took that opportunity.
that opportunity was the artificially low difficulty which made mining it easier. and them switching temporarily to BCH mining left bitcoin with lower hashrate and longer blocks and increased the number of unconfirmed transactions and as a result increased the fees.

suffice it to say that things are coming back to normal now that BCH is less profitable to mine and will soon turn into a "lose money if you mine" kind of thing.

[thejaytiesto]

Activation.

lol. it looks like block explorers are having some trouble keeping up with the upgrade. surprisingly, blockchain.info is leading the pack in successfully dealing with segwit: https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/900541884564742146

fortunately, the network seems to be functioning properly and any soft fork activation FUD has now been surpassed. no sign of any chain splits that i can see. onwards and upwards! now we just need to deal with this pesky bitcoin cash matter, and well, the segwit2x matter, and we can be done with it.

We will never be "done with it." Once you have been here for a while and you have gone throught hardfork attempts since Bitcoin XT, you understand that the attempts to hardfork bitcoin into something else will never go away, it is a constant attack that you have to deal with.

At the end of the day it all comes down to the users. If people don't support other chains with their money, it would be a non issue. If people don't take side to dump the attacking chain and gamble around, then we'll have 40 different Bitcoins by 2020.

[pinkflower]

This is how I feel with BTC after SegWit.



I was given the impression that it was also a scaling solution but now I am reading some comments on Reddit that its not.

[Carlsen]

Fees are 450 sat/byte for first block right now and growing. https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#8h

it is the effect of bitcoin cash, this time it was the cause of rising fees in bitcoin!
BCH presented miners with a golden opportunity to make a large amount of profit but only for a short period of time. surely like any logical person with a business would do, they took that opportunity.
that opportunity was the artificially low difficulty which made mining it easier. and them switching temporarily to BCH mining left bitcoin with lower hashrate and longer blocks and increased the number of unconfirmed transactions and as a result increased the fees.

suffice it to say that things are coming back to normal now that BCH is less profitable to mine and will soon turn into a "lose money if you mine" kind of thing.

The problem with BCH difficulty is that it adopts faster than difficulty with bitcoin.
That means miners will switch frequently from BTC to BCH and back, wherever more profit can be made.
For BCH that is not such a bit problem, because the number of transactions made there is very low.
For BTC with a large amount of transactions it is more a problem.

[nizamcc]

The SegWit that got activated has nothing to do with the increase in block sizes, so what they will be doing is they will try to compress the actual sizes of all the transactions and include more transactions in that block before it gets released over the network. Correct me here if I am wrong. Well, congratulations to everyone and it looks like party time but we still need to focus more on the fees that are also spiking up in different wallets as well as some transactions which are spending regular fee as shown in blockchain wallets are taking days to confirm or not confirming at all.

[1Referee]

Fees are 450 sat/byte for first block right now and growing. https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#8h

Just because Segwit has been activated, it won't automatically translate into transaction fees to go down a lot directly. At this point people are still transacting with non Segwit transactions like they have always been doing, and that means they are still subject to the pre-activation fees and everything. Other than that, I am glad that we have finally seen Segwit activate. I kept waiting for the the last block to come through and see Segwit activation become reality. This is what I consider to be a real milestone. At this point the only thing to focus on is what will be happening with the planned hard fork in November.

[severaldetails]

Fees are 450 sat/byte for first block right now and growing. https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#8h

Just because Segwit has been activated, it won't automatically translate into transaction fees to go down a lot directly. At this point people are still transacting with non Segwit transactions like they have always been doing, and that means they are still subject to the pre-activation fees and everything. Other than that, I am glad that we have finally seen Segwit activate. I kept waiting for the the last block to come through and see Segwit activation become reality. This is what I consider to be a real milestone. At this point the only thing to focus on is what will be happening with the planned hard fork in November.

If I understand it correct, the transactions stuck in the mempool are non segwit transactions and they will stay that way.
That means they have to be processed the old fashioned way and that will take time.
After that the road is free for faster transactions and lower fees, but only if they are sent with segwit?
Or is every transaction from this point on now in general with segwit?

[BitHodler]

SegWit makes sure that block sizes will decrease significantly in size, and from there it's assumed that the fees will go down significantly as well. I however would like to see it happen first, before I am going to believe it.

huh? it makes it possible for blocks to increase to 4MB at most (in the worst case scenario). that's a pretty significant increase. by addressing transaction malleability (and therefore making a large scale lightning network possible) we can maybe prevent future block size increases from being necessary. but they won't be decreasing.

I think you misunderstood me due to me not having properly phrased what I wanted to say.

What I meant to say is that SegWit transactions per definition are significantly smaller in size due their different construction in comparison to non SegWit transactions.

This will result to allow far more transactions to fit into blocks, even at the current 1MB block size. I think that's a pretty impressive development worthy of being considered a huge achievement.

[erpbridge]

I can't believe the price is rising. I am expecting bitcoin at this price point to be a bubble. For some reason I am losing my confidence as I see it continuing to go even higher after the segwit activation.

[ben_btc]

Can you please provide cryptographic proof of the officialness of this thread?

[1Referee]

After that the road is free for faster transactions and lower fees, but only if they are sent with segwit?
Or is every transaction from this point on now in general with segwit?

At this point Segwit transactions are being put to work on the testnet chain. In order for things to be put to work on the main chain, wallet clients need to allow you to create Segwit transactions on the main chain. Before you can start creating Segwit transactions, you must send your coins to a Segwit address first. If you after that spend your coins from your Segwit address, you'll be utilizing the Segwit update. As long as you aren't doing anything, and just use Bitcoin like you have always been doing, nothing will change.

[iluvpie60]

Do we need to wait until the backlog is cleared for the benefits to start happening?

Or are we being spammed more by someone? https://core.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#24h

I was looking at this and see that everything is going up again, so maybe it is the 1satoshi spam again.

From what I understand, all new transactions have the Segwit space saving, but previous transactions that are not cleared out yet don't.