Segwit Is Now Live on the Bitcoin Network

Segregated Witness (Segwit) was an idea that was introduced by the software developer, Peter Wuille, in 2015 at the Hong Kong Scaling Workshop. The protocol is meant to relocate witness inputs from the transaction hash, which will theoretically help malleability and create more block size space. The concept was at first well received by the bitcoin 'community, ' but some had hoped a block size increase would also follow. The community and developers couldn't come to terms with increasing the block size, and lots of infighting began. Further, this meant the Segwit protocol sat on the shelf for quite some time as some miners would not approve of the upgrade unless a block size increase was included.

Getting Things Done

Segwit2x developer Jeff Garzik.

After more than a year and a half of arguing and failed roundtable proposals, another meeting called the New York Agreement (NYA) took place this year and pushed things further. The 'agreement' said Segwit would be activated by the mining majority and followed by a 2MB hard fork. This brought about the birth of the Segwit2x working group led by early bitcoin adopter and developer Jeff Garzik. The Segwit2x development team and the majority of miners had managed to lock-in Segwit on August 8 on block 479707. Following this, on August 23 the mining pool BTC.com processed block 481822 and Segregated Witness was officially activated on the network.  Two days ago Segwit2x developer Jeff Garzik was thrilled about Segwit activating on the network, stating;

Would not have happened without Segwit2x moving past the gridlock — Getting Things Done.