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Ready to start building Dapps? Dive deep into blockchain development. Most of the information in this section is still accurate, but some of it is a bit outdated now.
Keep in mind it was written about a month ago, before many of the recent developments occurred. SegWit is a backwards compatible protocol upgrade originally proposed by the Bitcoin Core development team. It has been a centrepiece of the scaling roadmap supported by Bitcoin Core since the protocol upgrade was first proposed in December , and it is implemented on many active Bitcoin nodes on the network today. The first and original option was proposed by the Bitcoin Core development team.
Their SegWit code, defined by BIP , activates if 95 percent of hash power within a single difficulty period of about two weeks signals readiness before November 15th.
However, currently only some 40 to 45 percent of hash power is signaling readiness for BIP Starting on August 1st, their nodes will reject all blocks that do not signal readiness for BIP If this proposal is supported by any majority of miners by hash power , these miners should always claim the longest valid chain, which should activate SegWit on all SegWit-ready Bitcoin clients and avoid a split.
This should also minimize the chance of a split. There is also such a thing as miners signaling intent to support the New York Agreement, but this is effectively meaningless and will be ignored for the purpose of this article.
But according to the SegWit2x roadmap , July 14th is the day that signatories to the New York Agreement should actually install the BTC1 beta software and test it for themselves. Deployment of BTC1 is delayed by a couple of days, but not in such a way as to distort the remainder of the timeline. The SegWit2x development team aims for July 21st to be the day that BTC1 nodes are actually up and running, and, importantly, the day that miner signaling should commence. Several mining pools have already started signaling support for BIP91, even before the announced signaling date.
At the time of publication of this update, the hash power threshold has not yet been met, however. The precise threshold for BIP91 activation requires that within a pre-defined series of blocks, blocks must signal readiness. Since a number of mining pools have started to signal support for BIP91 early, the earliest BIP91 lock-in date has moved forward, too. Any blocks that do not signal readiness for Segregated Witness per BIP should now be rejected by a majority of miners by hash power.
But if you are miner, you should now only mine blocks, and only mine on top of blocks, that signal readiness for SegWit BIP Else you risk having your blocks rejected by a hash power majority. Since several mining pools have started to signal support for BIP91 early, the earliest BIP91 activation date has moved forward too. This means that BIP91 should activate on July 23rd.
If at least a majority of miners by hash power actually does enforce BIP91 for the next couple of weeks, this should make BIP obsolete. For more information, see this article. Segregated Witness BIP is no past the point of return for lock-in.
Since the next deadline is already missed see below , July 29th is now the second deadline day for miners, not the first. But sooner is better: And you really should. This article explains how. If BIP91 has not activated by July 29th and you are a miner, you now have two days to decide on which chain you will mine on August 1st: Or perhaps on the Bitcoin ABC chain; see below. In other words, if BIP91 did not lock in in time, there must now have been a two-week difficulty period in which 95 percent of hash power signals support for SegWit.
In reality, the chance is small that July 31st actually coincides with the closing day for a difficulty period. As such, both users and miners should have probably already prepared for a potential split, as explained for July 29th.
But July 31st really is your last chance to get ready. As of July 15th , this deadline can no longer be met. This is the day BIP activates, which makes it the third and final deadline day for miners to avoid a split.
On August 1st, at If neither has happened, a majority of miners by hash power now have one last chance to avoid a chain-split: This would ensure they always re- claim the longest valid chain according to all current Bitcoin nodes, and will activate SegWit through BIP This split could resolve over time if Bitcoin ever reclaims the longest chain, or if Bitcoin is abandoned by all miners and users for good, but this is not the focus of this article.
If you own bitcoin that is: Though, to access both types, you probably need to download new software. That said, if you are a regular user, it is probably best to initially halt any and all transactions, at least until the situation is more clear. Failing to do so may cost you money! Of course, you can still switch at any time. You may simply want to mine the most profitable chain, for example.
This should make BIP obsolete. However, i f a majority of hash power does not actually enforce BIP91 by August 1st, the scenario described here does still hold up.
BIP has now activated, and so far all is going well. Segregated Witness BIP is now past the point of no return for lock-in.
A ll Bitcoin nodes are still united on one chain. Bitcoin ABC will share a common history with Bitcoin up until August 1st, but will, for the first couple of days after that, probably be privately mined by Bitmain.
It will also include several new and incompatible protocol rules, perhaps most importantly an increased block size limit. If you owned bitcoin at the time of split — August 1st, But you may, in that case, need to download software to be able to send and receive the coins.
More information will likely become available if this event occurs. This launch is scheduled for August 1st, It may still take a couple of days before Bitcoin ABC becomes widely accessible for miners and users. Contraryto earlier reports, it appears that Bitcoin ABC will not include two-way replay protection. Bitcoin Cash BCH , as the new cryptocurrency is now called, launched yesterday. While the project is off to a slow start when it comes to hash power and blocks, trading has opened, and it seems as if the coin could make it.
Users would start to reject any blocks that do not signal readiness for Segregated Witness per BIP But whether this will actually happen remains to be seen. So far, few miners have publicly indicated they will support the UASF. If miner support on Bitcoin remains low, some of its users may opt to implement a hard fork to change the proof-of-work algorithm.
But it seems that if by August 15th less than 15 percent of total hash power mines on Bitcoin, this hard fork will be deployed. It could technically also lead to another split on the Bitcoin side, if some of its users decline to join the hard fork that changes the proof-of-work algorithm. As BIP has locked in and Segregated Witness seems increasingly likely to activate smoothly, there will almost certainly not be any proof-of-work change any time soon.
Segregated Witness BIP is now past the point of return. BIP is virtually made obsolete, and a proof-of-work change will almost certainly not be needed. But what the lock-in means is that all SegWit-ready clients will start enforcing the new rules in the next difficulty period: So if you are a regular user and would like to use the new features or want to maintain top-notch security, you now have two weeks to upgrade to software that enforces SegWit.
If a chain-split is not avoided, the situation could become far more complex. Segregated Witness lock-in is currently scheduled for August 8th. The exact time and date depends on how fast new Bitcoin blocks are found.
Technically, it will lock-in tomorrow; this is now virtually guaranteed. If a chain-split is avoided by miners, SegWit should activate around this time. Segregated Witness activation is currently scheduled for around August 23th. Segregated Witness activation is still scheduled for around August 23th. Toward the end of this year though potentially even up to early , the hard fork part of SegWit2x should take place. At this point in time, it seems almost certain that not everyone will change their software to support this hard fork.
As such, this could lead to another chain-split. How to deal with this situation as a regular users will be announced on Bitcoin Magazine closer to the actual date.
If you are a miner and you were only running the BTC1 client to help activate SegWit with no intention to support the hard fork, you should make sure to switch back to a non-BTC1 client before this hard fork takes place. This moves the hard fork date back by about a month, closer to late November or mid-December. Over a timespan of several months, this could possibly deviate by more than a week from November 22nd.
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