Author: Pieter Wuille 2015-12-21 04:33:16
Published on: 2015-12-21T04:33:16+00:00
In December 2015, a proposal was made by Gregory Maxwell via Bitcoin-dev to work towards the segwit 4MB block soft-fork to increase capacity and scalability. This proposal was supported by Wladimir J. van der Laan. The proposal suggested that segwit could help alleviate the ongoing deadlock of the block size debate by providing a short-term capacity bump and showing the world that scalability is being worked on. Additionally, it would solve several unrelated problems at the same time such as fraud proofs, script extensibility, and malleability while improving scalability by reducing bandwidth/storage and indirectly improving the effectiveness of systems like Lightning. Pursuing this plan was believed to be important as the hardfork debate had distracted from needed engineering work, created a toxic environment, and affected productivity and health. Soft-fork segwit was seen as a way to make progress without having to make a divisive choice for one hardfork or another yet.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T22:33:51.535475+00:00