UNDERSTANDING SEGREGATED WITNESS (SIGWIT)
A protocol improvement called Segregated Witness (SegWit) was created in 2015. The idea was put up as a remedy for the scalability issue that blockchain networks have and continue to have.
Every ten minutes on average, the Bitcoin network validates a brand-new block with a number of transactions in it. As a result, the number of transactions that can be confirmed in a block depends on the block size. The current speed of the Bitcoin blockchain is 7 transactions per second.
The basic goal of SegWit is to restructure block data so that signatures are separated from transaction data. In other words, the SegWit improvement involves separating transaction data from witnesses (signatures). This increases the transaction throughput of the system by enabling more transactions to be stored in a single block.
A Bitcoin transaction may occasionally take a very long time to complete because it can only perform roughly 7 transactions per second. When compared to traditional payment methods and financial networks, which can handle thousands of transactions per second, that is far slower.
Pieter Wuille, a Bitcoin engineer, and several Bitcoin Core contributors created SegWit in 2015. The SegWit upgrade was introduced via a soft fork on the Bitcoin network in August 2017.
SegWit is now being used by many cryptocurrency projects, including Bitcoin and Litecoin. Numerous advantages, including increased block capacity and transaction speed, resulted from the protocol change.
- BENEFITS
Increase in transaction fee
Increase in capacity
Transaction malleability fix
With relation to scaling, the introduction of SegWit was a significant step toward resolving many issues with Bitcoin and other blockchain networks. Blockchain networks are able to process more transactions more quickly and cheaply by combining SegWit with the second-layer protocols.
SegWit has not yet achieved widespread adoption, despite being a strong and cutting-edge solution. Approximately 53% of Bitcoin addresses are currently implementing SegWit.
https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/a-beginners-guide-to-segretated-witness-segwit