The stage of signaling about SegWit fixing proposal has started
On 27 July 2017, the Bitcoin network launched the signaling on fixing the Segregated Witness (SegWit) proposal. If implemented, this proposal will provide conditions for BIP 141 scaling.
The SegWit proposal creation was intended to optimize Bitcoin blocks to 75%, improve the network scalability and the speed of transaction approval, while also reducing transaction fees. The activation of the aforementioned solutions should help in avoiding the UAHF – the hard fork of the whole Bitcoin network that can lead to the segregation of the cryptocurrency blockchain into two or more chains.
To fix the SegWit proposal, 1916 (or 95%) of 2016 blocks must vote for it. One can observe the voting process on the Coin Dance portal – by the time this article is posted, 142 blocks voted in favor of SegWit fixing.
XBT.eu informs that the end of the signaling stage will end on 8 August 2017. The next period, that being the period of SegWit fixing, will continue until 21 August 2017 (the tentative date).
At the same time, the leading Bitcoin processor BitPay stated in its blog that it is not going to suspend business during the presumable date of the network hard fork, as the miners’ community has already implemented changes to the rules of consensus, thus almost fully ensuring the prevention of chain segregation or any other negative changes.