The implementation of SegWit in the Bitcoin ecosystem has been slower than expected. Since its activation in the blockchain, the percentage of transactions with SegWit has been very low.
Out of all the services listed on the Bitcoin Core website, 88 have already implemented SegWit, 17 are classified as “unfolding”, 23 are in the process of implementation and 24 barely mention SegWit in their plans for the future. A startup called LocalBitcoins and Bitcoinpay announced they would activate the bifurcation at the beginning of this year.
The current percentage of the SegWit transactions in the Bitcoin network varies between eight and twelve percent, more or less. One of the main reasons for the low percentage of SegWit transactions is that the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets have not yet implemented the bifurcation. For example, Coinbase and Binance do not use SegWit at the moment.
Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange from Hong Kong with more than five million users and it is usually among the first couple of exchanges with the largest transaction volume. However, Binance still hasn’t implemented SegWit and many users asked the company on Twitter when it will happen.
Coinbase is another large cryptocurrency exchange. It has more than 13 million users from different countries and SegWit is still not implemented in its system. The CEO of the company, Brian Armstrong, announced the implementation of SegWit in December and added it would be implemented this year. A couple of days later, the exchange announce the adoption of Bcash and shifted its priority towards that altcoin.
Jameson Lopp, a software engineer from BitGo, thinks the reason for Coinbase giving priority to Bcash over SegWit is due to the demand from the users. He said: “I think the problem is the demand. For what we have seen, the clients consider the airdrops of altcoins as free money and they demand from the wallets to put these assets at their disposal. This generates a large demand because it is a huge incentive for the users. On the other hand, things like SegWit are not defined as an incentive. I think Segwit did not have such a high level of demand by the users in general, although it seems the community became aware of the bifurcation and started getting more vocal about it, which provoked a response from Coinbase.”
