The percentage of transactions using Segregated Witness (SegWit) has hit a new all-time high above the 65% mark at the beginning of this year, as adoption for the scaling solutions keeps growing.
According to data from a website created to track the usage of SegWit on the Bitcoin network, transactions using it have jumped from around 36% in September 2019, to little over 65% on January 4.
SegWit usage is said to be growing partly thanks to cryptocurrency exchanges adding support for it. In October, for example, Bitfinex added native SegWit addresses for BTC withdrawals, shortly before BitMEX did the same.
The scaling solution’s adoption may keep on growing in the near future as Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, has said on Twitter the cryptocurrency trading platform plans to add SegWit adoption by the end of the first quarter of this year. The rise is significant as SegWit adoption was struggling to move over the 50% mark since April 2018.
SegWit is a protocol upgrade to the blockchain which helps reduce transaction sizes and transactions costs by removing the “witness” or signature data from transactions. Litecoin, often seen as the silver to bitcoin’s gold, adopted the scaling solution first and saw its SegWit usage hit 75% in September 2019.
Featured image via Pixabay.
