Title
SegWit Activation and the Political Battles Behind It
Published
February 26, 2024
Today’s topic delves into a controversial period for Bitcoin advocates who have followed the cryptocurrency for a decade.
In August 2017, a critical proposal reached the necessary threshold for activation, officially implementing Segregated Witness (SegWit), a scaling upgrade first proposed in late 2015.
SegWit enhances capacity by separating transaction witness data from other data within blocks. This allows up to 4MB of relevant transaction data to fit within a Bitcoin block, effectively circumventing the 1MB limit set by Bitcoin’s creator.
The SegWit implementation required miner support since November 2016, initially needing approximately 95% of blocks to ‘signal’ their backing by a 2.33-day window following the introduction of BIP91 in May 2017. This measure shortened the timeframe but lowered the threshold to 80%.
The required threshold was met on July 21, 2017, and SegWit activation was completed on August 24, 2017.
However, beyond the technical activation, significant political disagreement emerged. The newly formed New York Agreement (NYA), involving major mining interests, exchanges, and exchanges, advocated for further capacity increases via a hard fork known as SegWit2x.
SegWit2x aimed to effectively double the usable transaction space beyond the 4MB allowed by SegWit alone, ultimately enabling up to 8MB per block. The proposal was eventually abandoned, superseded by the launch of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which featured larger 8MB blocks.
While detailed analysis of the “Blocksize War” is widespread literature, consensus exists on the fundamental shift following SegWit activation. Significant debate over Bitcoin’s capacity limitations captivated the community.
Some exchanges and developers argued for scaling *within* SegWit, supporting its adoption, while others felt the political resolution lacked commitment to future scalability, leading to the hard fork on August 1, 2017, creating Bitcoin Cash.
The outcome of the SegWit activation process clearly demonstrated the complex interplay between technical upgrades and political consensus within the Bitcoin community during a pivotal moment. While Bitcoin itself continued operating according to its core protocol (subsequently adopting taproot), the introduction of a competing chain underscored the underlying disagreements.
