What's Left Before SegWit Goes Live? Bitcoin's Path to More Capacity

Jul 25, 2017 at 12:31 UTC by Pete Rizzo

Bitcoin is on the road to increasing its capacity – but it's not there yet.

Despite the claim bitcoin has been upgraded to support Segregated Witness-style transactions, there are more steps that need to occur before its distributed network can process additional data.

In fact, due to the complexities of keeping bitcoin's distributed network in unison, the change might not take hold until late August.

The timeline

That said, with BIP 91 activated, bitcoin is now headed down a path toward that possible outcome.

In context, this means that BIP 148, a proposal that seeks to upgrade the network to SegWit using different code, is no longer likely (though it's still possible). As such, one avenue that would find bitcoin splitting into two blockchains has been diminished, though it would be wrong to say it has been eliminated entirely – even in the short term.

Rather, SegWit now needs to follow a timeline designed to give miners and node operators ample time to upgrade their software, one that must also operate within the larger constraints of bitcoin's design.

Here's a best-case scenario of how this might unfold:

As illustrated above, miners must now signal support for SegWit until the code achieves "lock in" and "activation," two separate milestones with unique requirements...

Source:
https://www.coindesk.com/whats-left-before-segwit-goes-live-bitcoins-path-more-capacity/