Blockchain.com, a crypto wallet & exchange platform, announced today that it has officially activated its previously announced upgrade: SegWit is now live across Blockchain.com’s web wallet and mobile apps.
For users, this means lower fees on their bitcoin transactions. The activation does not affect how bitcoin is sent or received: SegWit updates how the transactions process in the background on the blockchain.
Summing Up SegWit
When lots of people try to send bitcoin concurrently, the queue of transactions gets congested, causing high transaction fees. SegWit solves this issue by creating more space in each block and allowing for more transactions at a time. This results in lower fees.
SegWit gets its name from the process that creates the space; separating (or “segregating”) the digital signature (also known as “the witness”) from the transaction.
“Since Blockchain.com users generate roughly 30% of the transactions on the entire Bitcoin blockchain, rolling out SegWit to our user base means an upgrade for the efficiency of the entire network.”
– The Blockchain.com Team