Segregated Witness, the awaited upgrade that many users were asking for has finally arrived at Coinbase and Bitfinex. Coinbase is a cryptocurrency platform that operates the GDAX trading exchange. Bitfinex is a Hong-Kong based crypto exchange that is one of the most important in the market. With this implementation, the Bitcoin network will be less congested.
Coinbase and Bitfinex Adopt SegWit
The information has been released by both cryptocurrency platforms in Twitter and with a blog post. Coinbase wrote as follows:
“Our engineering team has finished testing of SegWit for Bitcoin on Coinbase. We will be starting a phased launch to customers over the next few days and are targeting a 100% launch to all customers by mid next week.”
Our engineering team has finished testing of SegWit for Bitcoin on Coinbase.
We will be starting a phased launch to customers over the next few days and are targeting a 100% launch to all customers by mid next week.
— Coinbase 🛡️ (@coinbase) February 20, 2018
Coinbase has been working on adding this improvement since December. At that time, Dan Romero, vice president and general manager at Coinbase, indicated that the exchange was working so as to adopt the SegWit protocol in 2018.
Bitfinex has also updated its users about the adoption of SegWit. In a blog post, the cryptocurrency exchange explained that with SegWit the network keeps scaling. In this way, users will be able to reduce withdrawal fees and have improved processing times on transactions across the Bitcoin network.
Paolo Ardoino, Bitfinex CTO commented about this improvement:
“As a premier exchange, Bitfinex is committed to improving its market leading offering for our loyal and discerning customers. SegWit provides not only an immediate benefit for users, but also a foundation for future Bitcoin development. By supporting SegWit addresses, Bitfinex is tackling three of the biggest crypto-enthusiast concerns: transaction fees, transaction speeds and total network capacity.”
How Does SegWit Help the Bitcoin Network?
SegWit is a protocol improvement that facilitates scaling. In this way, users from Coinbase and Bitfinex will have lower transaction fees and improved processing times on transactions across the network. With SegWit, block size limits increase by separating the signature data from the transaction data.
SegWit is not the final solution for scaling problems in the Bitcoin network. It helps the network to scale while waiting for the off chain solution known as Lightning Network.
