There are a lot of issues in the Bitcoin world which will need to be addressed sooner or later. First of all, there is the scalability problem. Many companies and service providers lack support for SegWit right now. It seems Bitfinex is one step closer to finalizing its SegWit upgrade. According to an employee, the integration will be completed by next week.
Bitfinex Gets Closer to SegWit Integration
It is evident a lot of Bitcoin companies and service providers have struggled with integrating SegWit. Although this scaling solution has been part of the Bitcoin protocol for quite some time now, the number of SegWit transactions on the network is currently between 10% and 12% of all transactions. This means the vast majority of network transactions don’t use this scaling solution. It’s a problematic situation; that much is evident.
More specifically, we have seen numerous delays and high transaction fees because of congestion occurring on the network. While SegWit may not be capable of solving all of these problems right away, things would certainly look very different if all service providers integrated the code. Then again, there are challenges with doing so, as the SegWit code feels a bit “off” to a lot of companies, and solving that will take a lot of time and effort.
As a result, the list of companies which have yet to integrate Segregated Witness is pretty lengthy. Most exchanges have not made any significant progress in integrating this technology. According to a recent tweet by Chris Ellis, the SegWit integration with Bitfinex is almost complete. He claims it may roll out as early as next week, even though it remains to be seen whether that timetable is achievable. After all, the company has been relatively quiet about its progress in this area so far.
Moreover, it seems a few other companies are inching closer to integrating SegWit as well. More specifically, rumor has it that Blockchain – the popular cryptocurrency wallet – will finalize this in Q1 of 2018. We can only hope to see all major companies complete this integration before the end of next quarter. The community voted on Segregated Witness, and there is no reason to delay its integration any longer. Whether or not companies will adhere to this demand remains to be seen.
As one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world right now, it is good to see Bitfinex lead the pack in this regard. Without SegWit, the Bitcoin network will continue to clog up due to attacks and other types of spam transactions. No one knows for sure that this won’t happen when SegWit is active, mind you, as this solution has yet to be put through its paces on the live network.
