Bitcoin 0.13.0 with Segregated Witness code to be released in a few weeks

An upcoming bitcoin software update will for the first time include a special code that may be activated later to expand the transaction capacity of the bitcoin blockchain, which is what we often hear about as bitcoin expansion.

This code is called the "most important code change" in the 0.13.0 version of the Bitcoin software. The code is the "Segregated Witness" code, but it will not be activated in this version update, but in preparation for the final deployment, which may be activated in the 0.13.1 version.

This software update is expected to be released in the coming weeks.

Although the Segregated Witness feature has been extensively tested at this time, Bitcoin developers are seeking to democratize testing by activating the feature on the Bitcoin testnet and in “regression testing mode,” allowing a wide range of developers to test it themselves and report bugs or issues that arise during testing.

By adding the code now, Bitcoin Core developers believe that when SegWit is officially released, it will be smoother and more secure.

Segregated Witness was first proposed in December as a solution to bitcoin’s long-standing block size debate, with the proposal expected to boost bitcoin’s transaction throughput without requiring a change to the block size, a hard-coded limit on how much data a transaction block can contain.

The change will ultimately be triggered via a soft fork, where a majority of nodes will need to be updated to make the change compatible with older software versions.

Version 0.13.0 will also include some other updates, such as fee filtering, which allows nodes to make better decisions about which nodes to pass transactions to, and compact block relay, which reduces the bandwidth required when blocks are propagated on the network.