Segwit

[Hienrich]

Hi all,

I was wondering if someone could explain Segwit completely. I know that it separates the addresses from the actual input and moves it to a structure towards the end of a transaction. What is this structure? And how is Segwit bad? Thanks.

[SpaceMonkey]

some malicious partys like Bitmain and Roger Ver try to make it look bad but it is great for bitcoin!

here are the benefits:

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits/

[rizzlarolla]

Hi all,

I was wondering if someone could explain Segwit completely. I know that it separates the addresses from the actual input and moves it to a structure towards the end of a transaction. What is this structure? And how is Segwit bad? Thanks.

Wow. No man or woman on earth could explain segwit completely.

I would like to tell you to to search different sites to help you form a balance opinion.
Unfortunately, most bitcoin news sites, (all that i have ever visited?) are just paid for shilling. (i have proved that with some, it is clear to see - if you look)
Bitcointalk is mostly farmed accounts or hacked accounts all talking bollocks. (those accounts in the control of a few, draw your own conclusions, or read my post history)

Keep that in mind. Remember what Bitcoin used to be.

The question now is are miners really prepared to run the Bitcoin network on half security, using 4 mb weight to produce no more than 1.7 gain over time but likely never anywhere near, introducing thousand of lines of code, much of that complexity to facilitate a soft fork activation.

All so unneeded.
Just increase the blocksisze and keep increasing it.
Get rid of RBF, the deathbed of 0 confirmation and usability . Get rid of high fees and delays for at least 100 years.
Use Bitcoin, not some almost zero secure lightning chain.

As designed by satoshi - for good reason.
(i trust satoshi's vision far more than the monkey posting above)

[Kryptowerk]

Almost wanted to create a new topic, then I saw this one and thought I'd just hijack it:

I am torn here. I mean the majority of bloggers, tubers, whatevers, is in support for Segwit and the Core devs.
But what I wonder: Bitcoin scaled for years without problem by increasing its block-size from time to time, right?
Is there any reason why this could not just go on like before and BTC blocks could scale to 2MB, 4MB, 8MB etc. over time?
Also, is there any evidence that SegWit is an attempt to make Bitcoin more centralized?

I have been following this debate for months now and still am not sure what to believe. I hate it.

Note: I have slowly changed from a BU believer to a supporter of Core, because it seems to me that the Core team has indeed a lot of very smart minds and programmers trying their best to improve BTC.
But my biggest fear remains: That these efforts to change some fundamentals of Bitcoin are actually an "inside attack" to destroy Bitcoins decentralized nature.

[GreyWyvern]

From what I understand, the concerns of the SegWit group fall into a couple main points:

1. There is no provision, in particular from the BU team, to disable the ASICBoost "cheat". SegWit closes this hole. However there is nothing in big-block philosophy that says they can't also block it somehow. They just haven't come out and said they would. Of course, this makes all miners and devs nervous.

2. The Bitcoin network is made up of nodes and miners. Miners earn BTC for their participation, nodes do not. The issue here is that because there is no financial incentive to run a node, and that larger blocks will mean more power and bandwidth is required to actually run both nodes and miners, it will cause nodes to leave the network. This is actually a pretty legit concern, from a purely market-forces perspective, it's obvious this will happen.

But what are the consequences of such a network shift? That's where both sides throw around claims that aren't really verifiable. SegWit proponents argue that this will put miners in control of the network who will proceed to destroy it by raising the 21 million cap, or colluding to raise fees. Big-blockers OTOH trust that the market for BTC will keep miners from damaging the network on purpose. How? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


As for me personally, I fall on the big-block side simply because there is competition in the cryptocurrency market. If BTC was the only crypto out there, I'd probably be a SegWit fanboi because BTC would be something special we needed to protect. But BTC isn't special now, and miners know it. It's a wary eye on the upstart cryptos which will provide the market pressure that will keep miners from destroying the network. If they make decisions holders of BTC disagree with, value will leave their network. This will be a hit on their profitability, and they want to be as profitable as possible.

[Kryptowerk]

From what I understand, the concerns of the SegWit group fall into a couple main points:

1. There is no provision, in particular from the BU team, to disable the ASICBoost "cheat". SegWit closes this hole. However there is nothing in big-block philosophy that says they can't also block it somehow. They just haven't come out and said they would. Of course, this makes all miners and devs nervous.

2. The Bitcoin network is made up of nodes and miners. Miners earn BTC for their participation, nodes do not. The issue here is that because there is no financial incentive to run a node, and that larger blocks will mean more power and bandwidth is required to actually run both nodes and miners, it will cause nodes to leave the network. This is actually a pretty legit concern, from a purely market-forces perspective, it's obvious this will happen.

But what are the consequences of such a network shift? That's where both sides throw around claims that aren't really verifiable. SegWit proponents argue that this will put miners in control of the network who will proceed to destroy it by raising the 21 million cap, or colluding to raise fees. Big-blockers OTOH trust that the market for BTC will keep miners from damaging the network on purpose. How? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


As for me personally, I fall on the big-block side simply because there is competition in the cryptocurrency market. If BTC was the only crypto out there, I'd probably be a SegWit fanboi because BTC would be something special we needed to protect. But BTC isn't special now, and miners know it. It's a wary eye on the upstart cryptos which will provide the market pressure that will keep miners from destroying the network. If they make decisions holders of BTC disagree with, value will leave their network. This will be a hit on their profitability, and they want to be as profitable as possible.

Thanks a lot for your detailed response. Would like to hear more of that kind from other people!
The node thing wasn't on my rader, seems indeed a good point vs ever-increasing blocksizes.

What's your take on the lightning network? It seems to me this very interesting concept would end the fee-problematic once and for all and by enabling micro transactions new markets could and probably will be accessed.

You say Bitcoin isn't special right now. I tend to disagree, as Bitcoin has by far the widest adoption and recognition even in mainstream media. There is a ton of infrastructure that was built during the last few years and it has by far the largest userbase, which, after all, is one of the most important things a real-use currency should have, don't you think?

Regarding the node problematic I wonder if there could be a BIP allowing some node reward based on connectivity and uptime of that node. I guess this would need a hardfork, so why not do both things at a time (large blocks + reward for nodes).
Just my naive thoughts on the matter.

[GreyWyvern]

What's your take on the lightning network? It seems to me this very interesting concept would end the fee-problematic once and for all and by enabling micro transactions new markets could and probably will be accessed.

I don't know a lot about the Lightning Network, but I come at any layer-on-top of Bitcoin from a position of initial distrust. There has to be a very good reason that's obvious to me, why a signature layer outside of the Bitcoin blockchain would be both beneficial and secure. And I just haven't seen that.