Yes, finally the day has come. Coinbase is now going to be implementing Segwit to their platform in an effort to improve their services transaction costs and overall individual blockspace by 4mb to improve the Bitcoin network. Segregated Witness technology makes transactions lighter by transferring the signature out of the blockchain and enabling it to be authorized using the Lightning Network. The Ledger Nano Wallet and Trezor Wallet have already implemented the patch, but companies like Coinbase, Gemini and Blockchain.com have yet to do so.
Many of the cryptocurrency community are not happy with this, and are accusing the sites of restricting blockspace and continuously increasing backlog of transactions and consequently fees on the network. Coinbase has been aware of the problem for some time now and has announced on it's official Twitter account that the upgrade is going to be coming after testing of Segwit is completed. This comes after a 12,000 signature petition has been signed by users and submitted to the site, encouraging them to make the change to Segwit for better efficiency.
The update to Segwit is long awaited for the platform and will be viewed favorably by users, potentially giving them an edge on opposition coming into the year. As long as all is successful we will see optimized block capacity across the board and significantly better network performance for transactions. There are however still some who remain unsure of Segwit and the accessible use of the Lightning Network through it.
As the Lightning network requires a network of third party payment channels, it is seen as a dissolution of Bitcoins original intention. Unfortunately as block sizes have not been increased then it is evident that the change needs to be made to ensure Bitcoins economic validity. But we wonder still if such upgrades were not made earlier to ensure there was an exposure of "decentralized" transactions to third parties? Let me know your thoughts below.
If you like this post please check out my last one about whats stopping cryptocurrency from being your paycheck:
https://steemit.com/blockchain/@blockchainboom/what-s-stopping-employers-paying-with-cryptocurrency
