The chart below is a straightforward illustration showing Segwit’s timeline and possible Bitcoin scaling outcomes.
Explanation of Technical terms
Soft Fork: A backward-compatible change to the bitcoin protocol wherein only previously valid blocks/transactions are made invalid, but old nodes will still recognise the new blocks as valid.
UASF: User-activated soft fork is a soft fork activated by flag day or node enforcement instead of miner’s signalling.
Hard Fork: A bitcoin protocol upgrade that introduces a new rule to the network that isn’t compatible with the older node. Old nodes will not validate new blocks and new nodes will not validate old blocks either.
Segwit: Segregated Witness (BIP141) is a soft fork that aims to speed up transaction time and introduce potential scaling projects like Lightning Network.
Segwit2X: Includes Segwit and later a 2MB block Hard Fork.
Bitcoin ABC: A scaling proposal supported by miners and mining pools.
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