Why do people hate segwit so much?

[Jake052478]

If you are introducing something in the market, skepticism will always be there.  Before it can be accepted in the market, it will need to be tested first or what are the good features it brings to the user.  Like bitcoin, in the beginning, there are also a lot of resistance but now, it is widely accepted as payments to a transaction.  Give it a little more time and you will see...

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[KwizatzHaderach]

Miners hate it ( and their supporters too) as it will reduce fees. Bitcoin have been a lucrative business for them but the increasing fees are hurting everyone else. Just some greedy people wanting more cut in the pie.

[carlisle1]

So there is a group of people that are really against segwit and I don't really understand it. Honestly, I'm not even 100% sure I know what segwit is. Basically my understanding is that it removes the signature part of a transaction so that more transactions can be sent. Also, somehow it allows atomic swapping which is a fancy way of exchanging coins quickly. So why all the hate on segwit?

same here maye,i really now nothing about that segwit2x although it
almost spread all over the forum,but most of the thread shows their negative
issue about such.is there more concrete explanation about segwit thats easy
to adapt so we might understand clearly i hope there is.

Explanation would be appreciated thank you!!!

[adiksau0414]

I am also have the question about OP questions.  So i search some possible factors why segwit is not that popular to most of us. Will highlight the important matter.
1. SegWit doesn’t solve the most urgent capacity issue - SegWit, which is a soft fork solution for malleability, cannot solve the capacity problem.
2. SegWit will deepen Core’s impact on the community - As an implementation reference for Bitcoin, Bitcoin Core was of significant influence in the community. However, their influence has long been overrated by their actions. By abusing their previous influence, they’ve obstructed Bitcoin block size increase from happening, against the will of the community.
3. SegWit makes it harder for future block scaling - On technical terms, SegWit uses a transaction format that can be spent by those who don’t upgrade their nodes, with segregation of transaction data and signature data. This means SegWit is irrevocable once it’s activated, or all unspent transactions in SegWit formats will face the risk of being stolen.

[Test User]

Could you go into a bit more of details, how exactly would it render ASIC boost useless?

ASICboost works by finding partial block header collisions for the transaction list. With colliding block headers, it is possible to test one nonce against multiple block headers, while sharing some of the computations. By sharing computations, the total energy requirement is reduced.

This can easily be done by using certain parts of the block header, such as the version bits, as a nonce. The disadvantage is that it's obvious you are using ASICboost. This would not be affected by segwit.

There is a hidden way of using ASICboost, which instead of using a nonce in the block header, the search is performed by randomizing the order of transactions.

In the absence of segwit, because of the tree structure, it is not necessary to hash every transaction to compute a new Merkle root; it is merely sufficient to swap branches, and recompute only the hashes further up the tree. This is much faster than recomputing the whole tree, as it replaces linear scaling with log scaling.

With Segwit, there are two Merkle trees, with the witness root, located in the first leaf of the main tree. The two trees must have the same order, so must both be shuffled and hashed together, and not only that, but you always have to recompute the hashes for the route to the first leaf of the tree. This vastly increases the computational effort to find the collisions needed to use the ASICboost technique.

An alternative strategy for hidden ASICboost is for the miner to include a transaction to themselves in each block. They then use that transaction as a nonce (e.g. by varying the transaction output values). However, this requires an ECDSA operation and recalculating the path through the Merkle tree to that transaction. Again, for a hash collision search, it is a considerable computational effort.

The short answer is that segwit does NOT render ASICboost useless. Visible ASICboost is not affected. However, hidden ASICboost is made more difficult.

[achow101]

I am also have the question about OP questions.  So i search some possible factors why segwit is not that popular to most of us. Will highlight the important matter.

The problem is that those arguments are incorrect. While they are what people believe, they are also false.

1. SegWit doesn’t solve the most urgent capacity issue - SegWit, which is a soft fork solution for malleability, cannot solve the capacity problem.

It does not solve the capacity problem (there really cannot be a solution to that problem though), but it certainly helps. The redefinition to block weight and the lower weight given to segwit spends helps to increase the number of transactions in a block.

Furthermore, by fixing transaction malleability, Segwit enables 2nd layer solutions like the Lightning Network to work much better and more securely. These solutions allow for even more transaction capacity.

2. SegWit will deepen Core’s impact on the community - As an implementation reference for Bitcoin, Bitcoin Core was of significant influence in the community. However, their influence has long been overrated by their actions. By abusing their previous influence, they’ve obstructed Bitcoin block size increase from happening, against the will of the community.

The problem with that is that the Bitcoin Core developers did allow a block size increase to happen. Segwit is a block size increase, and it happened. Furthermore, if Bitcoin were ruled by Bitcoin Core, then Segwit would have activated immediately after it's release, not 10 months later.

3. SegWit makes it harder for future block scaling - On technical terms, SegWit uses a transaction format that can be spent by those who don’t upgrade their nodes, with segregation of transaction data and signature data. This means SegWit is irrevocable once it’s activated, or all unspent transactions in SegWit formats will face the risk of being stolen.

That is the nature of ALL soft forks, not just segwit. All soft forks are irrevocable once activated, or all unspent transactions that used anything deployed in a soft fork can be stolen. But also any fork that "reverts" segwit (or a different soft fork like P2SH), will just be a hard fork.

[Anarc Senior]

Honestly, I'm not even 100% sure I know what segwit is.

Honestly I think this is a huge part of it. The developers really failed at communicating what the change was to the average user. Now some might argue that it isn't their job, but there certainly should be some responsibility there for some party.

Anyway, yes, I think the reason there's a lot of hate, is because ther'es a lot of ignorance. People just genuinely do not comprehend how complicated bitcoin is, and how changes like segwit work, and what they do.

The implications of changes are also widely underappreciated and undercommunicated.

I wholeheartedly agree with you:  as an engineer whose works in the Silicon Valley, I often run into the issue of  lacking/ under communication - engineers in general prefer to solve the problem than communicate the problem -- this is a big deal when it's come to the survival of this technology.  As we've learned over and over that the best technology is not always necessarily  the winner in the end.  We need marketeers and spokesmen to spread the good information.  Andreas Antonopoluos is a good example of who we should need to represent bitcoin core - unfortunately he is a one man show, and we could see that he is exhausted...we need more of Andreas...too bad Roger Ver was a good guys until he allowed his ego and greed took the better of him...

[btc78]

Politics and the need to have the Core developers out. Some say it was because it would render Bitmain's Asic boost useless, and all other reasons that distracted us away from the truth. But I believe it was politics.

I will leave Achow and the rest more learned about the situation to comment.

youve got the right answer,its Politics we know that inside crypto are those
whales big miners and developers that having some issue towards each other,maybe
the segwit2x was been politicized thats why its cancelled and still dont know yet
when will it be

[FrueGreads]

Politics and the need to have the Core developers out. Some say it was because it would render Bitmain's Asic boost useless, and all other reasons that distracted us away from the truth. But I believe it was politics.

I will leave Achow and the rest more learned about the situation to comment.

youve got the right answer,its Politics we know that inside crypto are those
whales big miners and developers that having some issue towards each other,maybe
the segwit2x was been politicized thats why its cancelled and still dont know yet
when will it be

I don't think segwit2x was canceled because of politics. It just wasn't the right time for a hard fork to increase the block size. Not enough tests were done, and it wouldn't even be a long term solution for the scalability problem. Trying to implement segwit2x was politics, but canceling it was a good decision in my opinion. We are not even taking full advantages of segwit alone, because most clients and exchanges as still not using it, so we must first wait for segwit adoption, like it already happen on LTC long time ago, and then we need to stay focused on the lightning network. I think off-chain solutions will be much more eficient than increasing the blocksize. If people really want that, they can just go to bcash.

[william8829]

 Some hate SegWit because even after its implementation, we are still having the scaling issues ongoing as well as the fees are getting higher and higher each day.

That is why I bought into SegWit and that is why I am dissapointed in SegWit.

2. SegWit will deepen Core’s impact on the community - As an implementation reference for Bitcoin, Bitcoin Core was of significant influence in the community. However, their influence has long been overrated by their actions. By abusing their previous influence, they’ve obstructed Bitcoin block size increase from happening, against the will of the community.

How has Core abused their influence?  Who or What entity should have the most influence over Bitcoin protocol?  Bitmain?  Roger Ver?

[Intersan]

 Some hate SegWit because even after its implementation, we are still having the scaling issues ongoing as well as the fees are getting higher and higher each day.

That is why I bought into SegWit and that is why I am dissapointed in SegWit.

True, even if there are segwit being applied, in fact, the fees continue to rise which sometimes look unjust anymore. Well we can't blame them, we are not the only one who wants to gain profit using cryptos. Companies and businesses needs profit to see that they are effective and that they are going well. I just hope that when another segwit will be done, there will be a concern for the high transaction fees.

[nullius]

So why all the hate on segwit?

The short answer:  Ill-informed nincompoops who overestimate their own competence enjoy voicing opinions to which they are not entitled; and all which cannot be explained by stupidity, is caused by malice.  Cui bono?  “Follow the money.”

Longer answer, for those who wish to actually understand this issue:

The following told me all I needed to know about the anti-Segwit agitation and later, the so-called “Bitcoin Cash” scamcoin.  For more technical details, see also the references listed in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database under CVE-2017-9230, or the high-level description by Test User earlier in this thread.  N.b. that without Segwit, covert ASICBOOST is still wide-open for exploitation in “Bitcoin Cash”.

With boldface added, from this bitcoin-dev mailing list post on 2017-04-05 21:37:45 UTC:

A month ago I was explaining the attack on Bitcoin's SHA2 hashcash which is exploited by ASICBOOST and the various steps which could be used to block it in the network if it became a problem.

While most discussion of ASICBOOST has focused on the overt method of implementing it, there also exists a covert method for using it.

As I explained one of the approaches to inhibit covert ASICBOOST I realized that my words were pretty much also describing the SegWit commitment structure.

The authors of the SegWit proposal made a specific effort to not be incompatible with any mining system and, in particular, changed the design at one point to accommodate mining chips with forced payout addresses.

Had there been awareness of exploitation of this attack an effort would have been made to avoid incompatibility-- simply to separate concerns.  But the best methods of implementing the covert attack are significantly incompatible with virtually any method of extending Bitcoin's transaction capabilities; with the notable exception of extension blocks (which have their own problems).

An incompatibility would go a long way to explain some of the more inexplicable behavior from some parties in the mining ecosystem so I began looking for supporting evidence.

Reverse engineering of a particular mining chip has demonstrated conclusively that ASICBOOST has been implemented in hardware.

[…]

Due to a design oversight the Bitcoin proof of work function has a potential attack which can allow an attacking miner to save up-to 30% of their energy costs (though closer to 20% is more likely due to implementation overheads).

Timo Hanke and Sergio Demian Lerner claim to hold a patent on this attack, which they have so far not licensed for free and open use by the public.  They have been marketing their patent licenses under the trade-name ASICBOOST.  The document takes no position on the validity or enforceability of the patent.

Observe that a purported patent on a 20+% economic advantage threatens to give certain parties a substantial centralized influence over who has the most hashrate.  It is not only cheating:  Overall, covert ASICBOOST opens the way for a direct attack against the Byzantine fault-tolerant security of the Bitcoin network.

So as for ulterior motives to oppose Segwit.  What overt arguments are advanced by the anti-Segwit side?

On the presumption that Segwit-haters must have at least some plausible excuse for their position, I have spent far too many hours searching the Net and reading what they say.  My objective:  Find even one good reason to oppose Segwit on technical grounds.  Yet despite my such efforts, I have never seen a valid technical argument against Segwit.  All the anti-Segwit pseudo-technical arguments are unsubstantive handwaving—yes, it’s a moderately big patch; of course, it’s a big feature!—or bald-faced lies—e.g., the claim that miners could collude to grab “anyone-can-spend” transactions; no, Segwit full nodes would reject such such blocks as invalid, making such miners waste all their effort.[1]  (This last is not even a Segwit-specific matter:  Any soft fork will result in similar scenarios, which is exactly what makes the fork “soft” even when introducing radically different validation rules.  The alternative is a hardfork.)

The rest of the anti-Segwit arguments are nontechnical.  Some make menacing insinuations about Blockstream:  Very well, assume arguendo that Blockstream is pure evil (facts not in evidence) and totally controls Core (which they evidently don’t).  What is so bad about Segwit?  The question remains unanswered.  The remainder of anti-Segwit spew is merely moronic:  Insults devoid of all substance, at the puerile grade of “Segwit makes you a doodie-head”.

Meanwhile, in so-called “Bitcoin Cash”, almost three and a half months of EDA fluctuations made something tantamount to a premine of fake-Bitcoin.  In that time as well as afterwards, any party exploiting covert ASICBOOST could and can reap BCH at 20+% under the energy cost paid by other miners.  Oh.  Suddenly, it all makes sense.  Cui bono, indeed.  Follow the money.

1. Miners have exactly one function:  Byzantine fault-tolerant ordering of transactions.  Important and valuable though that function may be, it is strictly limited in technical scope.  Miners do not have authority over validation:  All full nodes are responsible for enforcing validation, and will reject invalid mined blocks just as if rejecting random garbage.  Such is the power of each and every individual full node.  This is a point of common misunderstanding amongst ignorant fools who imagine that miners somehow own the network; and the misunderstanding is encouraged by persons with material ulterior motives for pretending that miners be Bitcoin gods.

[stomachgrowls]

 Some hate SegWit because even after its implementation, we are still having the scaling issues ongoing as well as the fees are getting higher and higher each day.

That is why I bought into SegWit and that is why I am dissapointed in SegWit.

True, even if there are segwit being applied, in fact, the fees continue to rise which sometimes look unjust anymore. Well we can't blame them, we are not the only one who wants to gain profit using cryptos. Companies and businesses needs profit to see that they are effective and that they are going well. I just hope that when another segwit will be done, there will be a concern for the high transaction fees.

I don't have any hopes related into this matter which I do accept that fees would really be incredibly high as the adoption of bitcoin would still continue to grow.Segwit for me or on other forks are just like ending up some drama and don't really tend to make innovation or solution regarding on this matter which it turns out that it would just be good for easy money or free fork coins. Some people do hate it because it doesn't really give any contributions or actually give an affect on bitcoin development and also it do affect the price as well.

[nullius]

 Some hate SegWit because even after its implementation, we are still having the scaling issues ongoing as well as the fees are getting higher and higher each day.

That is why I bought into SegWit and that is why I am dissapointed in SegWit.

True, even if there are segwit being applied, in fact, the fees continue to rise which sometimes look unjust anymore.

Public Service Announcement:  If your Bitcoin address starts with a “1”, DO NOT COMPLAIN about Segwit not saving you fees!

The first question for those complaining about fees:  Are you using a Segwit address?  That would instantly get you a 75% discount on fees.  A backward-compatible (P2WPKH-in-P2SH) Segwit address looks like this:  36finjay27E5XPDtSdLEsPR1RypfhNW8D8.  Any Bitcoin client made in the past few years can send money to it, so you don’t need to wait for other people to upgrade.  A Segwit-native Bech32 address looks much different; it is the address format of the future, but only people who have recently upgraded their software would be able to send money to it.  I hope to use Bech32 for my own addresses in a year or so; meanwhile, I have upgraded my software so I can send to them.

Addresses starting with a “1” do not get the Segwit discount, and will never get the Segwit discount.  (Same with some addresses starting with a “3”.  There is no way to identify a P2WPKH-in-P2SH address just by looking at it; that is why it is backward compatible.)  The “discount” is not for nothing; and pedants, please excuse that I am deliberately oversimplifying a bit in this explanation.  What users need to understand is that Segwit helps the network, and they get an instant 75% discount for more making efficient use of the network.  Using an old, non-Segwit address?  You are using more network resources, so you will pay more.

That explains what you can do right now to get lower fees with Segwit.  But there is another part to this:  The fee market.  Several large companies opposed Segwit, and have thus far refused to use it themselves although it would save them huge amounts on fees.  This is distorting the fee market, keeping everybody’s fees higher than should be.  Furthermore, there are other parties deliberately spamming the network with low value/high fee transactions, to drive up fees on purpose.  Both these problems will eventually be solved by economic pressure.  Such problems are expensive for the parties causing them.

All that being said, you should never expect fees to return to anywhere near the levels where they were a few years ago.  Fees used to be absurdly low, because blocks were not full.  Bitcoin was mostly unknown, or considered a toy for nerds.  Now, you are seeing $11k+/BTC exchange rates for the same reason that blocks are full:  Bitcoin is at the threshold of seizing the mainstream, it is valuable, everybody wants it, and lots of people are using it.  You cannot get one without the other.  Bitcoin is not just a cryptocurrency:  It is the cryptocurrency, and demand for block space will always exceed supply.

I don't have any hopes related into this matter which I do accept that fees would really be incredibly high as the adoption of bitcoin would still continue to grow.

That.  As for the “drama” you referenced:

What idiot BCH pushers do not realize is that their fees are low, because their huge blocks are almost empty.  Outside of a small, vocal crowd (mis)led by some manipulative people who have money to toss around, nobody cares about their scamcoin.  Their solution to “scaling” is to not need it.

Bitcoin doesn’t need a little bump-up; it needs to scale big.  Its demand-driven market value has increased 100× in the past few years; I think its network transaction capacity needs at least 10000× increase, to be future-proof.  Orders-of-magnitude increase in capacity cannot be achieved by linearly increasing the blocksize.  That is a simple, unavoidable, arithmetical fact; and anybody who says otherwise is either stupid or lying.  The solution is to add another layer.  That would be this Lightning Network thing you have probably heard about.

Activating Segwit was the first step toward supporting that new layer.  Segwit is only the beginning!  As long as certain parties were blocking activation of Segwit, everything else was held up, too.  Now that Segwit is a network reality, developers have the next step in an active testing phase.

Fees will never again be really low for on-chain transactions; for Bitcoin being valuable means that blocks will always be full.  But you can reduce your fees 75% right now by using a Segwit address; and in the near future, you can look forward to really low fees on Lightning.

[1NV3ST0NM3]

Politics and the need to have the Core developers out. Some say it was because it would render Bitmain's Asic boost useless, and all other reasons that distracted us away from the truth. But I believe it was politics.

I will leave Achow and the rest more learned about the situation to comment.

People would say a lot many things about it but so far what I have learned about segwit2x it is just going to promote the use of bitcoin by reducing the transaction size, time and fees. But half of the world was against it because they actually did not know about it properly. In this crypto world people very quickly just follow the steps of the top members of community rather than using their own brains. Like if one of the core miner would say its not good around 5% of the community would declare this to be not good. Same happened with this too. Miners gave their support to this venture in beginning and snatched that as we moved closer to that block because they knew it would burn a hole in their own pocket by reducing the fees. People blindly just followed the pattern and here we are today still using the same old pattern by faying a lot hefty fees.

[MoonJeina]

So there is a group of people that are really against segwit and I don't really understand it. Honestly, I'm not even 100% sure I know what segwit is. Basically my understanding is that it removes the signature part of a transaction so that more transactions can be sent. Also, somehow it allows atomic swapping which is a fancy way of exchanging coins quickly. So why all the hate on segwit?

It is never easy to accept changes . Even though segwit fork was a soft fork on bitcoin which was meant to increase the effeciency of payments and transactions the but bitcoin community did not seem to support the segwit fork .
The core was not ready to change from the orignal version. Also the feature which was restricting from expanding the blockchain made it more reluctant for the people.

[nullius]

People would say a lot many things about it but so far what I have learned about segwit2x

Are you talking about Segwit, or the attempted hostile takeover misleadingly called “Segwit2X”?  I have seen this error pop up a few times on this thread.  So-called “Segwit2X” has nothing to do with Segwit, except as a cheap propaganda ploy.

It is never easy to accept changes . Even though segwit fork was a soft fork on bitcoin which was meant to increase the effeciency of payments and transactions the but bitcoin community did not seem to support the segwit fork .
The core was not ready to change from the orignal version. Also the feature which was restricting from expanding the blockchain made it more reluctant for the people.

Say what?  It was Core who created Segwit.  It was Core who fought an uphill battle to get Segwit activated against the wishes of certain powerful parties.  Core won that battle because, contra what you say, the community did support Segwit.  Thus the power of the threat of UASF (User-Activated Soft Fork), which relied entirely on the support of the Bitcoin community.  When it looked like a showdown was approaching wherein the community would force Segwit to activate, some of the anti-Segwit parties split off and cooked up the “New York Agreement” to save face—and attempt ramming through an absurd blocksize hardfork.

Segwit was opposed by (a) certain particular large miners, who evidence suggests are exploiting covert ASICBOOST; (b) certain particular monied interests who want to either centralize control of Bitcoin, or wreck Bitcoin entirely; and, (c) groupies who lapped up the swill dished out by the first two, because they’re idiots.  Now, these people have their own little playpen which they call “Bitcoin Cash”.  They have no dev team worth speaking of, no technological improvements, and no economic support except for a small number of wealthy backers who prop up the price so they can occasionally pump-and-dump.  It would be funny, if it weren’t so pitiful; and it would be sad, if it weren’t so disgusting.

Meanwhile, with Segwit, I currently get a 75% discount on fees using real Bitcoin; and I can look forward to all the Segwit-requiring technological improvements which Core and the Lightning devs[1] have in the pipeline.

1. Lightning is not developed by Core, though of course there is some overlap between who is involved with both projects.

[mpufatzis]

I am not sure that people hate segwit.
I believe it is something new and as many times is happening it needs time to be accepted.
Some of the exchanges are not ready yet, wallets aren't either.
If you want to have small fees using it is the only way.

[posi]

I am not sure that people hate segwit.
I believe it is something new and as many times is happening it needs time to be accepted.
Some of the exchanges are not ready yet, wallets aren't either.
If you want to have small fees using it is the only way.

You're not sure people hate SegWit? I guess you don't read crypto currency news  because the SegWit group suspend the fork which ought to happen acouple of weeks back cause 80% of bitcoiner don't support the SegWit2X including the miners.

[nullius]

You're not sure people hate SegWit? I guess you don't read crypto currency news  because the SegWit group suspend the fork which ought to happen acouple of weeks back cause 80% of bitcoiner don't support the SegWit2X including the miners.

Repeat ten times slowly, until it sinks in:  “Segwit2X” is not Segwit.  “Segwit2X” is not Segwit.  “Segwit2X” is not Segwit....  Got it?

So-called “Segwit2X” was a scam in name and substance, as I explained above.  I 100% support Segwit.  But this fairly represents my opinion of “Segwit2X”, a.k.a the “New York Agreement”:

I am not sure that people hate segwit.
I believe it is something new and as many times is happening it needs time to be accepted.
Some of the exchanges are not ready yet, wallets aren't either.
If you want to have small fees using it is the only way.

Thanks for the correction.  You’re absolutely right, “people” don’t hate Segwit.  A small but vocal group of imbeciles led by crooks hates Segwit, and tries to spread a false impression that “people hate Segwit”.  The title of this thread contributes to that.  It’s a cheap propaganda ploy:  “Why do people hate X so much?”, when very few people actually hate X.