Segwit Bitcoin Network or Legacy Bitcoin Network, which do you prefer and why? | @gbenga's Lecture 3
Segwit Network Protocol
Segwit, a protocol that was implemented in 2015 on the Bitcoin network to solve the scalability problem of Bitcoin which had been from the beginning. This scalability problem is that the Bitcoin blockchain can process only 7 transactions per second and each block can be confirmed every 10 minutes.
I did several readings and research and I found out that Bitcoin is generally slow and as we know scalability is the process by which a product can adapt to larger demands or information thereby solving problems generally. So, Segwit's major purpose is to make more data stay in the block by removing the signature. So Segregated Witness allows for more transactions to be stored in a single block.
Legacy Bitcoin
This was the original bitcoin network before an upgrade to the protocol. This network was the original network for Bitcoin and it is still used to date. Legacy Bitcoin (P2PKH) addresses starts with "1"
Why SegWit is Better
With segregating witnesses, blocks have had an improvement in capacity with the removal of signature from transaction. Before SegWit, signature usually take about 65% of the block until SegWit segregated the witness vote from the block transactions thereby allowing for several transactions to be comfirmed at once without signature thereby increasing the effective block size to 4MB.
SegWit has also increased the speed of transaction which has reduced the cost of fees in transactions. Signatures are no longer a part of the transaction data, which removes the possibility of altering a data. Nested SegWit (P2SH) addresses begins with 3 and Native Segwit Address begins with bc1
Interesting explanation about Segwit. I must say that you have done a good job, i hope to see you in my subsequent class.
Rating: 7/10