The long-lasting block-size dispute has catapulted into the center of attention again. One of the most talked-about developments is Segregated Witness, of which a public testnet iteration was launched last week. The innovation as recently proposed by Blockstream co-founder and Bitcoin Core developer Dr. Pieter Wuille is a centerpiece of a scalability “ roadmap ” set out by Bitcoin Core.
To find out where the broader development community stands on Segregated Witness, Bitcoin Magazine reached out to library and wallet developers; those who will need to do the heavy lifting in order to utilize the innovation once rolled out.
In part 4 of this series: Mycelium developer Leo Wandersleb. Segregated Witness
Wuille’s Segregated Witness proposal is set to offer several improvements to the Bitcoin protocol. The benefit that has received the most attention is its potential to effectively increase the block size to a range from 1.75 megabytes to 2 megabytes without requiring a hard fork. Interestingly, however, many Bitcoin developers are more excited about the other Bitcoin protocol improvements that Segregated Witness has to offer.
Wandersleb, whose Mycelium has officially committed to integrating Segregated Witness once rolled out, acknowledged the importance of the innovation.
“Segregated Witness is not a block size increase, but a technical necessity to fix completely different issues, by also producing less load on the blockchain,” Wandersleb explained. “There is, however, a realistic chance that it will take a long while before it has an effect on total transaction throughput.”
The Mycelium developer believes, however, that Wuille’s Segregated Witness proposal is the best way forward, at this point.
“The fact that all of this is possible as a soft fork, which results in only a slightly more ugly protocol than a hard fork, is amazing at this point,” Wandersleb said. “It allows anyone to delay implementing the change, making sure nobody […]
