Last week, Bitcoin Core version 0.13.1 was released, officially bringing Segregated Witness (SegWit) to Bitcoin. 4 days in, 13.7% of Bitcoin nodes has already upgraded to Bitcoin Core 0.13.1, supporting the activation of SegWit.

SegWit is an innovative scaling technology developed and introduced by the Bitcoin Core development team. Once it reaches a soft fork activation threshold, it will separate the transaction signatures from the initial transactional data, which immediately increases the capacity of blocks and eliminate transaction malleability.

Like all soft forks, the SegWit release (0.13.1) requires 95% of network hashpower to become activated. However, it is still difficult to speculate the future of SegWit due to the decisions of several major miners to prevent the SegWit release.

Miners split

Specifically, ViaBTC (6% hashpower) and Bitcoin.com (2.2% hashpower) are supporting Bitcoin Unlimited, a hard fork proposal that enables miners to openly choose the size of blocks that they deem fit.

Since a soft fork activation requires 95 percent of hashpower, theoretically, ViaBTC and Bitcoin.com mining pools could stop the activation of SegWit if their hashpower remains intact.

At the moment, 90.27% of hashpower is in support of Bitcoin Core while the other 10% supports other alternative proposals like Bitcoin Unlimited and Bitcoin Classic.

Although, the voting process for BIP 141 (SegWit release) starts on November 15, a substantial number of node operators are already showing support for SegWit.

BitGo Runs Core 0.13.1 surpassed Bitcoin Unlimited

According to 21 Inc’s Bitnodes, 13.7% of Bitcoin nodes has upgraded to Bitcoin Core 0.13.1 over the past 4 days, which is a significant growth rate considering that the voting process for BIP 141 hasn’t even started yet.

The node count for Bitcoin Core 0.13.1 has already surpassed Bitcoin Unlimited, which has remained at around 6% since the release of SegWit.

BitGo, arguably the largest multi-signature service provider and Blockchain security firm in the Bitcoin industry, officially announced that it has started to run Bitcoin Core 0.13.1, showing support for SegWit.

Currently, BitGo is the security partner of leading wallet service providers including Kraken, Bitfinex, and Magnr. The firm has processed over 1 bln transactions since its launch in 2013.

Apart from BitGo, many Bitcoin startups and platforms have completed the preparation for SegWit support. These startups include Ledger Wallet, GreenAddress, GreenBits, and Purse.Io’s BCoin.