The SegWit activation was a joke?

[Seansky]

This is already not true - if I interpret blockchain.info's statistics right, so far, we had four blocks with more than 1 MB (these need to include Segwit transactions), three of them mined today:

- block 481947 (1,032119 MB)
- block 482152 (1,00003 MB)
- block 482187 (1,00003 MB)
- block 482191 (1,00001 MB)

So things are moving slowly, but they are moving.

Maybe segwit is not yet fully active? If only few have block sizes more than 1mb that means segwit isn't fully activated. I thought it really will solve slow transactions if it is fully activated and as I see it now, I think it really didn't solve the problem but it is too early to say it. To judge whether it is really activated or not, I will wait a month or so because full utilization of segwit might really take long.

[Iranus]

Maybe segwit is not yet fully active?

You don't know what activation is.

Segwit would get completely locked in only on november 18th

You don't know what locking in is.

Segwit is a scam.

scam
skam/Submit
nouninformal
1.
a dishonest scheme; a fraud.

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits/ - please point out what Bitcoin Core said here which was objectively a lie that they were aware of at the time.

Basically what I'm saying is that you don't know what a scam is.
It's this kind of misunderstanding of what proposals are supposed to achieve that results in all this FUD happening now.  SegWit is not supposed to make everything 100% perfect overnight.

[RawDog]

Hello guys, I really don't understand all the "excitement" about that SegWit thing. It already activated couple of days ago and still nothing - too many unconfirmed transactions, fees are very high, block sizes are still under 1 MB, and slow confirmations. Where is the promised lightning network? When (if at all) the current situation will change?

Well, some say it is because of the bitcoin Cash. SInce bitcoin cash is getting easier to mine, the miners are shifting from Bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash and making the confirmations delayed. The block is not the problem but the miners who are confirming it.

Does that mean bitcoin cash is becoming more popular than the bitcoin?

Yes.  It will become more each day and then finally overtake the old bitcoin.

[RawDog]

This is already not true - if I interpret blockchain.info's statistics right, so far, we had four blocks with more than 1 MB (these need to include Segwit transactions), three of them mined today:

- block 481947 (1,032119 MB)
- block 482152 (1,00003 MB)
- block 482187 (1,00003 MB)
- block 482191 (1,00001 MB)

So things are moving slowly, but they are moving.

Maybe segwit is not yet fully active? 

It is fully active. It is just broken.  It doesn't do what they said it would do.  They told everyone it was part of a scaling solution.  Obviously that is incorrect.

[alifrenstein]

Thanks God, situation is already getting better! Fees are gradually decreasing and there are less and less unconfirmed transactions!

[fluidjax]

This is already not true - if I interpret blockchain.info's statistics right, so far, we had four blocks with more than 1 MB (these need to include Segwit transactions), three of them mined today:

- block 481947 (1,032119 MB)
- block 482152 (1,00003 MB)
- block 482187 (1,00003 MB)
- block 482191 (1,00001 MB)

So things are moving slowly, but they are moving.

Maybe segwit is not yet fully active?  

It is fully active. It is just broken.  It doesn't do what they said it would do.  They told everyone it was part of a scaling solution.  Obviously that is incorrect.

Its not broken, its working as intended, perhaps you just don't understand it properly.
Full benefits will be realised when people actually start sending to and from a segwit address.

However if the spam keeps up, the transaction fees may not drop, but this would be a problem on any chain.
Its worth noting that no other chain (except maybe ETH) has needed to consider scaling.
None of the funky solutions in some alt coins have ever been testing under real game theory conditions.
As BCH is discovering with its EDA mess.

http://segwit.5gbfree.com/countsegwit.html

[bitart]

Thanks God, situation is already getting better! Fees are gradually decreasing and there are less and less unconfirmed transactions!

Well, it's not a permanent solution, I'm afraid, and mempool is still over 60k, which is less than the 100k (26th August), but still a huge pile of tx. Our luck is that BCH has raised the difficulty (according to fork.lol) and BTC is more profitable at the moment, compared to BCH. So miners are on the BTC chain now and they're working on the transactions, and it's weekend now, which is another luck for BTC. I'm wondering how many unconfirmed transaction will be confirmed by the time of the next BCH EDA...

[marky89]

We can't deny that there were some over-promising and now some under-delivering. Plenty of people thought the SegWit activation on August 1st would cure all problems, and they see now that nothing has changed... I'm betting BTC's price to go down because of this. Of course, it will raise again in the future.

There was only over-promising done by people who were spreading misinformation -- not from Core developers and other experts in the field. To those paying attention, it was very clear that Segwit would only provide capacity benefits once people begin switching to the new address types and using them. This was actually one of the largest objections from Jeff Garzik: that it takes too long for everyone to voluntarily upgrade and start using the new rules.

And Segwit was only activated a couple days ago (not on August 1st). Most wallet providers haven't released their Segwit-compatible wallets yet, so we need to be patient. In any case, the main benefits of Segwit have nothing to do with the block size increase. They will come later, now that we have dealt with transaction malleability.

But sure, BTC's price could go down, just because there is no hype anymore. Or for no reason at all.

[bitart]

Thanks God, situation is already getting better! Fees are gradually decreasing and there are less and less unconfirmed transactions!

BCH difficulty has been adjusted overnight, but it's still less profitable to mine compared to bitcoin, but the difference is just a little now. (BTC 1.26, BCH 1.0, fork.lol) At midnight it was about 3:1 for BTC. Mempool has sticked to 60k, so we'll see what happens when EU and US gets up and starts to send transactions again in the morning. SW activation has little effect yet, now it's the miners's choice to select the most profitable coin to shrink it's mempool.

[qwerth]

block sizes are still under 1 MB

This is already not true - if I interpret blockchain.info's statistics right, so far, we had four blocks with more than 1 MB (these need to include Segwit transactions), three of them mined today:

- block 481947 (1,032119 MB)
- block 482152 (1,00003 MB)
- block 482187 (1,00003 MB)
- block 482191 (1,00001 MB)

So things are moving slowly, but they are moving.

didn;t noticed that, but the transaction time and fees , both are going out of proportion.

[erpbridge]

I had doubts too. My confirmation in the evening took more than an hour just for a single one. I hope it gets better in the near future. There was speculation it was happening due to bitcoin cash but it doesn't seem to be the case.

[d5000]

didn;t noticed that, but the transaction time and fees , both are going out of proportion.

Well, actually everyone can contribute to the situation to improve: simply using Segwit transactions and addresses. The more Segwit is used, the more the situation will improve - it doesn't improve on its own

I presently use Electrum and it seems to only support it for testnet, but Bitcoin Core users can create segwit addresses with the following command (ADDR must be an address that already exists in your wallet!):

Code:

addwitnessaddress ADDR

according to this answer on Bitcoin Stack exchange.

[seattletu]

Segwit initiation falls under the control of BIP 9 — a strategy for conveying different in reverse perfect delicate forks in parallel. Segwit's BIP 9 sending requests that at least 95% of pieces flag availability for Segwit in a 2016 block period. With a specific end goal to flag preparation for Segwit an excavator sets bit 1 in the nVersion field of each piece that they mine. These bit 1 "banners" are what BIP 9 searches for when it ascertains if 95% of the squares in any given period are flagging status for Segwit.

[icon73]

It has almost nothing to do with bitcoin cash. Segwit activation is the first step towards adding new features to bitcoin - it doesn't magically speed up all transactions just by being activated. Next all exchanges, wallets and service need to start using segwit transactions for it to actually ease pressure on fees and block sizes. So far only very few segwit transactions have been made as most transactions are still normal transactions and they do not get faster or cheaper just because segwit is activated.

On the other hand what you're currently seeing with fees going up and transactions being delayed is a concerted spam effort coordinated by people trying to make it look like the bitcoin blockchain is congested and needs a controversial 2x upgrade in November which is being pushed by the NYA miners when most of the userbase and developers are against it and will not agree to their threats. It's artificial and does not represent the real economy situation.

This totally makes sense sir! Desperados are trying hard to hijack the whole thing. I seriously doubt money is the cause of their desperation.

Maybe next quick solution should be making Bitcoin resistant to spam attack. it's so far their only way to harm the Network.

Good night good people!

I agree, lets use a large variable block size so that spam doesn't matter. Oh, wait...

[defined]

This is already not true - if I interpret blockchain.info's statistics right, so far, we had four blocks with more than 1 MB (these need to include Segwit transactions), three of them mined today:

- block 481947 (1,032119 MB)
- block 482152 (1,00003 MB)
- block 482187 (1,00003 MB)
- block 482191 (1,00001 MB)

So things are moving slowly, but they are moving.

Maybe segwit is not yet fully active?  

It is fully active. It is just broken.  It doesn't do what they said it would do.  They told everyone it was part of a scaling solution.  Obviously that is incorrect.

Its not broken, its working as intended, perhaps you just don't understand it properly.

You are right, most people including me do not know how to use it.
Do you know how to use SegWit?  According to https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2128315.0 there is no user interface yet to use SegWit.
SegWit works, but it cannot be used yet.

[Bitcoin Guy]

Hello guys, I really don't understand all the "excitement" about that SegWit thing. It already activated couple of days ago and still nothing - too many unconfirmed transactions, fees are very high, block sizes are still under 1 MB, and slow confirmations. Where is the promised lightning network? When (if at all) the current situation will change?

The Segwit does not really increase the block size; the size should stay around 1MB, because it is not a hard fork.  However, Segwit laid the foundation for possible Lightning Network (LN) implementation technology wise.  With LN, millions of transactions can be processed within a second.  Because of that, the community is debating whether a Segwit2X hard fork is necessary.  Personally, I do not think it is necessary if we do implement something like LN.

[Maum]

Many of you have the opinion, that segwit was not successful, even failed. So should we now swap to BCH because BitCash supporters were right and Segwit supporters wrong?

[d5000]

Do you know how to use SegWit?  According to https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2128315.0 there is no user interface yet to use SegWit.
SegWit works, but it cannot be used yet.

There is no graphical user interface yet. But as I said [ DO NOT POST SESC LINKS #top]in this post[/url] (and also was mentioned by TryNinja in the thread you linked) there is the addwitnessaddress command.

It should also work in the graphical Core client, at least from 0.13 onwards (selecting Debug Window -> Console).

If you want to use only Segwit transactions from now on, what you can do is create a new, fresh address, convert it to "Segwit style" with addwitnessaddress, and move all your coins to the newly created address. If you want all your coins on Segwit addresses, you should then take care that you don't accept any transactions to "legacy" addresses (so create some more Segwit addresses if you want more privacy).

I read that also NBitcoin does the trick, but that is a library for expert users and programmers.

[hase0278]

Many of you have the opinion, that segwit was not successful, even failed. So should we now swap to BCH because BitCash supporters were right and Segwit supporters wrong?

Bitcoincash supporters weren't right just because transactions are slow now because segwit isnt used yet by many addresses. There are only a few blocks who exceeded 1mb limit as linked by someone who posted here in this thread. It is activated now but it cant be fully used by the network yet. We can see how fast transactions are with segwit at litecoin. To use segwit, Follow the tip of the one who posted right above this post.

[surix]

I would recommend you to read the lightning network white paper, there is a very good description about the block size needed to achieve transaction per second comparable to visa network, it's like 8GB per block.

So, if we continue the route to increase block size, most probably we will reach a dead end where nodes will be highly centralised.

Segwit, on the other hand, is offering much more long term possibilities, even though the short term effect is not that visible (yet).