Segwit Adoption. I looked at some data, and we are not there yet.

[bitmover]

I saw a nice topic today about services that support segwit, by dkbit98.

I saw a question about adoption, and I decided to investigate further into:

Native Segwit adoption is on the rise

i'm curious if there is any data to support this, i thought it plateaued a while ago.

I made a quick google search and found something herE:
https://transactionfee.info/charts/payments-spending-segwit/

That chart really looks optimist, but is there really all that 60%+ adoption?

I looked today at LoyceV tsv file with all addresses with balance, and I made these 2 charts.

The first one is the sum of all balances by address format. We can clearly see that Legacy address holds more than 63% of all balance available.

If you sum all the balance you can see that every bitcoin in included in the graphic, 18.525 million btc

Someone could argue: "But those old addresses are mostly old and abandoned, many whale wallets lost, abandoned, etc"

So I decided to make a second chart: Number of addresses by format.


The situation is even worse...

So, we can conclude that we are having more segwit transactions now than before. But most of the bitcoins are still in legacy addresses.


There is a lot of potential uses in that TSV files LoyceV made. I will try to make better analysis or charts later on.

Edit:
Found a better way to calculate segwit adoption using transaction_count.txt and witness_count.txt in Bitcoin block data available in CSV format (LoyceV/blockchair data)

[1714606557]

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[1714606557]

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[1714606557]

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[1714606557]

1714606557

[jackg]

Can you do one with only addresses that have been received over the past year?

Some people probably haven't bothered updating and a few might not even know about it... For both bitcoin core and electrum you have to make a new wallet and it took me about a year to do that myself so.... I think Hardware wallets have also taken a longer amount of time to update them to use segwit (although trezor's Web client does suggest you update from legacy).

[Artemis3]

There is no reason to use legacy. I have been using bech32 nearly since it got added into Electrum. The incentive is there, you pay a tiny little bit less in transaction fees. Could this be some exchange that keep being the bulk users still with outdated systems in place? Maybe the pools as well?

Well usage is voluntary, same as LN; but personally i see no reason to keep using legacy or P2SH addresses. And yes, P2SH pays a bit more than bech32, so don't use the excuse that its "the same thing" and move everything into bech32. You will appreciate it the next time you move funds from a bech32 address, its cool and it works.

Motivation

For most of its history, Bitcoin has relied on base58 addresses with a truncated double-SHA256 checksum. They were part of the original software and their scope was extended in BIP13 for Pay-to-script-hash (P2SH). However, both the character set and the checksum algorithm have limitations:

• Base58 needs a lot of space in QR codes, as it cannot use the alphanumeric mode.
• The mixed case in base58 makes it inconvenient to reliably write down, type on mobile keyboards, or read out loud.
• The double SHA256 checksum is slow and has no error-detection guarantees.
• Most of the research on error-detecting codes only applies to character-set sizes that are a prime power, which 58 is not.
• Base58 decoding is complicated and relatively slow.

[bitmover]

Can you do one with only addresses that have been received over the past year?

I think this could be interesting as well. Probably a pie chart of all UTXO by address format since 2017 when the first segwit wallets were released.

I can't do with the data I used, but it is certainly easy to find. I think loycev made this data available in csv format here  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5246271.msg54373224#msg54373224

I just need to dig into it.

There is no reason to use legacy. I have been using bech32 nearly since it got added into Electrum. The incentive is there, you pay a tiny little bit less in transaction fees. Could this be some exchange that keep being the bulk users still with outdated systems in place? Maybe the pools as well?

The only real reason to use Legacy is to be able to sign a message which signature is recognized by every software. Other than that, just disadvantages, as you pointed out.

[BrewMaster]

i don't think looking at addresses is going to give us the best metric here because an address may have been created any time. for instance i have a funded address that is from before SegWit and i have never touched it because there is no reson to, but that doesn't mean i haven't been using SegWit for all my transactions.

the best metric in my opinion is the number of SegWit inputs per block. for example if a block has 2000 transactions and that is 2500 inputs and out of those 1500 are SegWit inputs then you can say the adoption is 60%.

[fiulpro]

See not all people support SegWit , there are countless articles on the internet stating how it's a super bad thing and is destroying the system itself. I will quote one below :

“Segregated witness is systematically destroying everything good and worthwhile about Bitcoin: segwit is inelegant and complicated; it creates two parallel sets of rules for evaluating transactions, but ignores one of them. Segwit breaks Bitcoin’s security by empowering miners and anyone who can coerce them to steal balances. And segwit is breaking the Bitcoin ecosystem up, causing people to fork the blockchain just to avoid using it, and destroying the mind share, confidence, and name recognition in Bitcoin.”

You can read more at : https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@bitcoinshirtz/the-hard-truth-about-segwit

This statement is made by a guy Nathan :


Well apparently I don't know much about this guy but he seems to have a lot of problems with segWit , but being a software developer he should understand for a fact that , these things needs to adapt, if the transaction fee of bitcoins doesn't have a solution soon , it will have problems for the people for sure. People will opt for other solutions.

As for me I do use SegWit to send/recieve but there are many wallets and exchanges who doesn't support it therefore that's a downside and limits my options.

I believe we do have a serious matter of discussion here, the advantages and disadvantages of segWit. Since am not a professional nor qualified to even answer this , I would leave it for the fellow techno experts.

[bitmover]

See not all people support SegWit , there are countless articles on the internet stating how it's a super bad thing and is destroying the system itself. I will quote one below :

“Segregated witness is systematically destroying everything good and worthwhile about Bitcoin: segwit is inelegant and complicated; it creates two parallel sets of rules for evaluating transactions, but ignores one of them. Segwit breaks Bitcoin’s security by empowering miners and anyone who can coerce them to steal balances. And segwit is breaking the Bitcoin ecosystem up, causing people to fork the blockchain just to avoid using it, and destroying the mind share, confidence, and name recognition in Bitcoin.”

-snip-

Well apparently I don't know much about this guy but he seems to have a lot of problems with segWit , but being a software developer he should understand for a fact that , these things needs to adapt, if the transaction fee of bitcoins doesn't have a solution soon , it will have problems for the people for sure. People will opt for other solutions.

This is a 3 year old article.

By that time, bitcoin was forking into bitcoin and bch.
There was a lot of misinformation around the web to promote BCH fork. There was also a lot of uncertainty about bitcoin future, segwit, blocksize and so on. This article was one of those that promoted misinformation. Nobody would ever publish an article like that today.

If you look back 3 years ago, all bch drama and discussion about blocksize/segwit may look ridiculous. But there were a lot of early bitcoin  holders and adopters who were mislead into by buying BCH.

[fiulpro]

See not all people support SegWit , there are countless articles on the internet stating how it's a super bad thing and is destroying the system itself. I will quote one below :

“Segregated witness is systematically destroying everything good and worthwhile about Bitcoin: segwit is inelegant and complicated; it creates two parallel sets of rules for evaluating transactions, but ignores one of them. Segwit breaks Bitcoin’s security by empowering miners and anyone who can coerce them to steal balances. And segwit is breaking the Bitcoin ecosystem up, causing people to fork the blockchain just to avoid using it, and destroying the mind share, confidence, and name recognition in Bitcoin.”

-snip-

Well apparently I don't know much about this guy but he seems to have a lot of problems with segWit , but being a software developer he should understand for a fact that , these things needs to adapt, if the transaction fee of bitcoins doesn't have a solution soon , it will have problems for the people for sure. People will opt for other solutions.

This is a 3 year old article.

By that time, bitcoin was forking into bitcoin and bch.
There was a lot of misinformation around the web to promote BCH fork. There was also a lot of uncertainty about bitcoin future, segwit, blocksize and so on. This article was one of those that promoted misinformation. Nobody would ever publish an article like that today.

If you look back 3 years ago, all bch drama and discussion about blocksize/segwit may look ridiculous. But there were a lot of early bitcoin  holders and adopters who were mislead into by buying BCH.

Yes, but I have seen some people who still insists on using normal addresses, but at the same time samourai wallet is like the most secure , most private one that I ever used , it was suggested by someone on this forum years back and I still use it till now.

Even though the article is like 3 years old but it still appears on the front page , no one even thought about updating it , nor there was any additional information and such.

I believe the only disadvantage of segWit is :
It's limits your choices since most wallets don't support it.

°~°

I believe with time those people for sure exchanged their coins in BTC now.

The problem is , if a newbie , if a non tech person , who just joined searches on google , this is what he will get , which unfortunately is misleading as you said it , that is why I said I would leave this discussion for tech experts.

-maybe someone should start making blog ? Share opinions and stuff there ? Since there are many limited positive articles regarding it. Which might influence the usage too.

[LoyceV]

Can you do one with only addresses that have been received over the past year?

I think this could be interesting as well. Probably a pie chart of all UTXO by address format since 2017 when the first segwit wallets were released.

I can't do with the data I used, but it is certainly easy to find. I think loycev made this data available in csv format here  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5246271.msg54373224#msg54373224

I think you're looking for this data. It's 112 GB (at 100 kB/s), and gives each address per block. That should be enough to create a graph with the number of addresses per type per day.
I still have the data, so I can extract some of it for you or give you a faster download, but it's still going to be a lot of data.

Note that the green addresses in your pie chart also include multisig.

[bitmover]

Note that the green addresses in your pie chart also include multisig.

Indeed.
But as far as I understand, those multisig addresses you are talking about are P2SH-multisig addresses.
They are not P2SH-Segwit, but still P2SH.


I found this:

P2SH multisig
A P2SH output where the redeem script uses one of the multisig opcodes. Up until Bitcoin Core 0.10.0, P2SH multisig scripts were standard transactions, but most other P2SH scripts were not.

Not to be confused with: Multisig pubkey scripts (also called “bare multisig”, these multisig scripts don’t use P2SH encapsulation), P2SH (general P2SH, of which P2SH multisig is a specific instance that was special cased up until Bitcoin Core 0.10.0)

...

Multisig
Bare multisig
A pubkey script that provides n number of pubkeys and requires the corresponding signature script provide m minimum number signatures corresponding to the provided pubkeys.

Not to be confused with: P2SH multisig (a multisig script contained inside P2SH), Advanced scripts that require multiple signatures without using OP_CHECKMULTISIG or OP_CHECKMULTISIGVERIFY

Source: https://developer.bitcoin.org/glossary.html


So, Bare multisig addresses do not start with 3, as they are not P2SH address.  are they a legacy format.?

Maybe someone can give more information about this?

Edit:Just to add a bit of more information

From mastering bitcoin:

Pay-to-Script Hash (P2SH) and Multisig Addresses
Bitcoin addresses that begin with the number “3” are pay-to-script hash (P2SH) addresses, sometimes erroneously called multisignature or multisig addresses. They designate the beneficiary of a bitcoin transaction as the hash of a script, instead of the owner of a public key. The feature was introduced in January 2012 with BIP-16 (see [appdxbitcoinimpproposals]), and is being widely adopted because it provides the opportunity to add functionality to the address itself. Unlike transactions that "send" funds to traditional “1” bitcoin addresses, also known as a pay-to-public-key-hash (P2PKH), funds sent to “3” addresses require something more than the presentation of one public key hash and one private key signature as proof of ownership. The requirements are designated at the time the address is created, within the script, and all inputs to this address will be encumbered with the same requirements.


..

Multisignature addresses and P2SH
Currently, the most common implementation of the P2SH function is the multi-signature address script. As the name implies, the underlying script requires more than one signature to prove ownership and therefore spend funds. The bitcoin multi-signature feature is designed to require M signatures (also known as the “threshold”) from a total of N keys, known as an M-of-N multisig, where M is equal to or less than N. For example, Bob the coffee shop owner from [ch01_intro_what_is_bitcoin] could use a multisignature address requiring 1-of-2 signatures from a key belonging to him and a key belonging to his spouse, ensuring either of them could sign to spend a transaction output locked to this address. This would be similar to a “joint account” as implemented in traditional banking where either spouse can spend with a single signature. Or Gopesh, the web designer paid by Bob to create a website, might have a 2-of-3 multisignature address for his business that ensures that no funds can be spent unless at least two of the business partners sign a transaction.

So, to sum up:
I believe it is safe to say that 3.... addresses are all P2SH.

[DaveF]

How many addresses out there are cold storage / physical things that have funds sitting on them in legacy addresses?
They will probably be there for a long time.
How many are paper wallets?
There are a few other reasons I can think of that legacy is still around and being used.

-Dave

[tranthidung]

You can get more details from time-series plots there https://txstats.com/dashboard/db/bech32-statistics?orgId=1&from=now-5y&to=now

According to these, it seems your playing time with data results in almost fitted results with data from txstats.com. Congratulations for your good works 

[Wind_FURY]

So, we can conclude that we are having more segwit transactions now than before. But most of the bitcoins are still in legacy addresses.

How old are those UTXOs, and when were the dates last received from those addresses?

See not all people support SegWit , there are countless articles on the internet stating how it's a super bad thing and is destroying the system itself. I will quote one below :

“Segregated witness is systematically destroying everything good and worthwhile about Bitcoin: segwit is inelegant and complicated; it creates two parallel sets of rules for evaluating transactions, but ignores one of them. Segwit breaks Bitcoin’s security by empowering miners and anyone who can coerce them to steal balances. And segwit is breaking the Bitcoin ecosystem up, causing people to fork the blockchain just to avoid using it, and destroying the mind share, confidence, and name recognition in Bitcoin.”

You can read more at : https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@bitcoinshirtz/the-hard-truth-about-segwit

This statement is made by a guy Nathan :


Well apparently I don't know much about this guy but he seems to have a lot of problems with segWit , but being a software developer he should understand for a fact that , these things needs to adapt, if the transaction fee of bitcoins doesn't have a solution soon , it will have problems for the people for sure. People will opt for other solutions.

As for me I do use SegWit to send/recieve but there are many wallets and exchanges who doesn't support it therefore that's a downside and limits my options.

I believe we do have a serious matter of discussion here, the advantages and disadvantages of segWit. Since am not a professional nor qualified to even answer this , I would leave it for the fellow techno experts.

That's Grade-A FUD from a person who is gaslighting and spreading disinformation. I had very long debates about it against fudsters, big blockers, and trolls.

[pooya87]

That chart really looks optimist, but is there really all that 60%+ adoption?

there is a difference between SegWit adoption (the transactionfee.info chart) and Bech32 adoption (the pie charts you posted). the first one is measuring how many transactions have witnesses and the later is measuring how many bech32 outputs are being created or in your case how many bech32 addresses are used.
the SegWit adoption is at that ~60% and has plateaued (with small/slow increases). Bech32 address usage seem to be growing faster though as more wallets start adding it and people stop needing the "workaround" that is the P2SH-P2WPKH type.

See not all people support SegWit , there are countless articles on the internet stating how it's a super bad thing and is destroying the system itself. I will quote one below :

that's the problem with the internet, every idiot can pretend to be an expert and then give "expert advice" to others!

“Segregated witness is systematically destroying everything good and worthwhile about Bitcoin: segwit is inelegant and complicated; it creates two parallel sets of rules for evaluating transactions, but ignores one of them. Segwit breaks Bitcoin’s security by empowering miners and anyone who can coerce them to steal balances. And segwit is breaking the Bitcoin ecosystem up, causing people to fork the blockchain just to avoid using it, and destroying the mind share, confidence, and name recognition in Bitcoin.”

every single sentence in this quote is pure nonsense. people like this dude are the reason why to this day there are beginners who think SegWit removes signatures from transactions!

[Carlton Banks]

Bech32 address usage seem to be growing faster...

yes, that's the optimistic part

[snip]...as more wallets start adding it and people stop needing the "workaround" that is the P2SH-P2WPKH type.

...also, the "P2SH" section includes _some_ segwit addresses, but it's impossible to know how many (this section of BTC addresses on the blockchain are all scripts protected by hashes, and the script is unknown until a transaction is spent from that address)

But if you look at the stats for _spends from_ P2SH-wrapped segwit and bech32 segwit addresses (as I said, once you spend from P2SH, the script becomes known), P2SH-segwit is consistently twice as used as bech32.



on another note: I don't actually care that much


every time someone spends from legacy addresses, it constrains the blockweight, keeping blocks smaller ;P

[Wind_FURY]

Bech32 address usage seem to be growing faster...

yes, that's the optimistic part

[snip]...as more wallets start adding it and people stop needing the "workaround" that is the P2SH-P2WPKH type.

...also, the "P2SH" section includes _some_ segwit addresses, but it's impossible to know how many (this section of BTC addresses on the blockchain are all scripts protected by hashes, and the script is unknown until a transaction is spent from that address)

But if you look at the stats for _spends from_ P2SH-wrapped segwit and bech32 segwit addresses (as I said, once you spend from P2SH, the script becomes known), P2SH-segwit is consistently twice as used as bech32.



on another note: I don't actually care that much


every time someone spends from legacy addresses, it constrains the blockweight, keeping blocks smaller ;P

Lukedashjr actually advices the active Bitcoin users to use Legacy because of that reason, keeping blocks smaller, and keep the blockchain size as small as much as it can be done possible.

[LoyceV]

I had some time, so how's this:

Code:

date,1 addy count,3 addy count,Bech32 addy count,1 addy value,3 addy value,Bech32 addy value
2009-01-03,1,0,0,5000000000,,
2009-01-09,14,0,0,70000000000,,
2009-01-10,61,0,0,305000000000,,
2009-01-11,93,0,0,465000000000,,
2009-01-12,106,0,0,487900000000,,
2009-01-13,123,0,0,615000000000,,
2009-01-14,130,0,0,651100000000,,
2009-01-15,140,0,0,680000000000,,
2009-01-16,110,0,0,560000000000,,
2009-01-17,109,0,0,545000000000,,
2009-01-18,108,0,0,550000000000,,
2009-01-19,117,0,0,652500000000,,
2009-01-20,115,0,0,610000000000,,
2009-01-21,103,0,0,520000000000,,
2009-01-22,92,0,0,505000000000,,
2009-01-23,86,0,0,465000000000,,
2009-01-24,202,0,0,1055000000000,,
2009-01-25,192,0,0,960000000000,,
2009-01-26,97,0,0,580000000000,,
2009-01-27,98,0,0,500000000000,,
2009-01-28,112,0,0,560000000000,,
2009-01-29,122,0,0,665000000000,,
2009-01-30,117,0,0,585000000000,,
2009-01-31,139,0,0,790000000000,,
2009-02-01,114,0,0,575000000000,,
2009-02-02,129,0,0,645000000000,,
2009-02-03,169,0,0,768652000000,,
2009-02-04,119,0,0,595000000000,,
2009-02-05,126,0,0,630000000000,,
2009-02-06,122,0,0,610000000000,,
2009-02-07,134,0,0,764800000000,,
2009-02-08,133,0,0,760000000000,,
2009-02-09,135,0,0,890000000000,,
2009-02-10,120,0,0,600000000000,,
2009-02-11,135,0,0,720004000000,,
2009-02-12,119,0,0,595000000000,,
2009-02-13,124,0,0,620000000000,,
2009-02-14,136,0,0,680000000000,,
2009-02-15,131,0,0,730000000000,,
2009-02-16,123,0,0,760000000000,,
2009-02-17,117,0,0,585000000000,,
2009-02-18,118,0,0,590000000000,,
2009-02-19,125,0,0,700000000000,,
2009-02-20,122,0,0,610000000000,,

It's currently processing 112 GB compressed data, and it's slooooooooooooooow. If this proves useful I'll create another topic for it and add automated daily updates.

I'm hoping you'll create a nice graph showing the use of each address type over time, including the total (daily) value sent to those addresses.

[bitmover]

It's currently processing 112 GB compressed data, and it's slooooooooooooooow. If this proves useful I'll create another topic for it and add automated daily updates.

I'm hoping you'll create a nice graph showing the use of each address type over time, including the total (daily) value sent to those addresses.

Thanks LoyceV.

For now, my computer does not have the required disk space to process that data. I only have a small notebook with a single SSD drive of 250gb, and only about 100gb free.

Can we make this file smaller?
We only need data since 02/26/2018 (Bitcoin Core segwit release date). This will make the file much smaller. Can you slice off all data prior to this data? how much will the file be?

[Pffrt]

The reason behind bech32 holding less bitcoin is most of the services don't support bech32, as a result they don't hold their bitcoin in bech32 as well (if they would, they would support too I think).
It's sad. Segwit adoption would give us more space to block. I don't get what's wrong with some services, why don't they support segwit.

[LoyceV]

Can we make this file smaller?

It's only one line per day, so around 250 kB in total. But I'll change my script a bit, see if I can improve performance so it doesn't take days. Update: it's running again, and about 30 times faster. I'll have the data either tonight or tomorrow morning.

We only need data since 02/26/2018 (Bitcoin Core segwit release date).

I'm kinda interested to see how many 3-addresses are in use before SegWit.