What Is Segregated Witness (SegWit)?
Segregated Witness (SegWit) is a protocol upgrade for the Bitcoin blockchain that was activated in August 2017. It is designed to improve scalability and reduce transaction fees by separating signature data from transactions on the blockchain. SegWit also enables new features such as Lightning Network, which allows users to send payments instantly with low fees across multiple blockchains. The main benefit of SegWit is that it increases the capacity of each block on the Bitcoin network, allowing more transactions to be processed at once without increasing block size or requiring hard forks.
In addition to improving scalability and reducing transaction costs, SegWit also provides additional security benefits for users. By separating signatures from transactions, it makes double-spending attacks much harder since attackers would need access to both parts of a transaction in order to successfully execute an attack. Additionally, because signature data does not take up space within blocks anymore, miners can now include more transactions per block than before while still maintaining their current reward structure. This helps ensure that miners are incentivized properly and keeps them motivated towards securing the network long-term.