Litecoin community supports SegWit at 59%, F2Pool may be the biggest "behind-the-scenes promoter"

Two cases of activating Segregated Witness (SegWit) through different channels have made great progress recently. As the price of Litecoin (LTC) continues to create new heights, the activation of SW in this system is about to become a reality.

Litecoin hits new high

The problem of scalability is inherent to Bitcoin. Although Litecoin itself is not troubled by this problem, SW seems to be appreciated by the system, and the current support rate of SW has exceeded 59%. Once the support rate reaches 75%, SW will be activated, just like what the competing currency asset Syscoin did a few days ago (the Syscoin system has successfully activated SW).

Litecoin founder Charlie Lee has always been a supporter of SW, but not for its scalability, after all, Litecoin does not have the problem of limited transaction capacity. He wrote in January:

(SW) mainly fixes the transaction malleability problem, which helps the deployment of the Lightning Network (LN) in the Litecoin system.

Thanks to F2Pool for supporting Litecoin and SW! It is clear that the market supports this solution.

(Note: Currently, F2Pool represents nearly one-third of the computing power of the entire Litecoin network.)

After Lee announced the increase in SW support, traders seemed to be very optimistic about the news. The price of Litecoin broke through $9 on Monday, creating a three-year high.

SegWit2MB solution

Meanwhile, in the Bitcoin space, a new proposal, SegWit2MB (to achieve 2MB capacity expansion), has received support from ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees and Andreas Antonopoulos.

Separately, former BTCC COO Samson Mow also announced the winner of the best code for executing a “user activated soft fork” (UASF).

In a blog post last week, Voorhees announced that SegWit2MB had been officially sent to the Bitcoin Core development team.

Supporters of the plan, Bitcoin security consultant Sergio Lerner and RootStock, believe that once the plan gains community support, it is likely to take effect before December 14 this year.

Finding a balance

Lerner pointed out that SegWit2MB is neither a perfect technical solution nor a long-term solution. He prefers to describe SegWit2MB as a "lowest common denominator."

He explained:

The Segwit2MB project will add a very small patch to Bitcoin that aims to resolve the conflicting political positions between Segwit activation and increasing on-chain transactions through standard block size increases. This is not a new solution, but it should be seen as the lowest common denominator between them.

Lerner added that the concept is not new, while Voorhees commented that the “cost of conflict” means that we urgently need a solution that meets both “social” and technical needs.

Bitcoin is definitely a technological project, but it is also a social project… We are currently at a technological and social impasse, and continuing will only cost more.

Voorhees believes the program can build a bridge between the technical and social needs of the community.

From the current technical and social deadlock, SegWit2MB is the first reasonable compromise. In fact, its code comes from top engineers in the Bitcoin field who have a thorough understanding of Bitcoin.

Antonopoulos also expressed his agreement with Voorhees in a tweet, saying that SegWit2MB is a "political solution that has nothing to do with technology."

SegWit2MB is definitely not the most ideal solution, but at least there will be no more expansion wars.

UASF has the upper hand?

At the same time, Miao announced on Twitter that he rewarded shaolinfry with 5.95 bitcoins because he wrote the security code to implement UASF (a scheme to activate SW).

Shaolinfry later confirmed this, and another user gave him 1 bitcoin to thank him for proposing this new activation plan.

Judging from the current situation, SW’s support rate is still far below the 95% activation threshold, which is the main reason why UASF has become a way to break the miners’ deadlock.

Interestingly, Chain engineer Oleg Andreev suggested that Bitcoin’s capacity problem is just a myth and that there is no need to implement block capacity expansion.

He said:

The Bitcoin network is functioning normally.