GDAX, the trading arm of cryptocurrency brokerage Coinbase, announced today that they will implement full SegWit support for Bitcoin transactions in the coming days. The protocol upgrade aims to make transactions quicker and cheaper for users of BTC.
GDAX Joins Coinbase and Bitfinex
GDAX are the latest of the cryptocurrency industry’s major players to offer support for SegWit. They follow their parent-company Coinbase and Hong Kong-based exchange Bitfinex in rolling out the upgrade. GDAX made the announcement earlier today via their blog:
“We are excited to announce that GDAX now supports Segregated Witness (SegWit) transactions on the Bitcoin network. Over the coming days, full support for SegWit transactions will be rolling out to 100% of our customers. SegWit is a critical step forward in the development of Bitcoin and we are thrilled to support it on GDAX.”
The post went on to explain how the SegWit (or Segregated Witness) upgrade works. Put simply, the transaction data is split using SegWit. This makes it possible to only store necessary transaction data on the blockchain. With transactions requiring less information be included on-chain, more of them can fit into each block. This, in turn, reduces the need for users to increase their transaction fees. Previously, when the blockchain was full, users would be required to use a large fee if they wanted the network to validate their transaction before others also waiting. This forced users to continually increase their fees until they reached the point where some declared the network as “broken“.
Later in GDAX’s post, they state that the address format that they will use will be compatible with all existing BTC addresses. All withdrawals from GDAX will, therefore, be sent using SegWit.
The company are careful to point out that the new format will no longer be the same as Bitcoin Cash (BCH) addresses, however. This means that if BCH is sent to GDAX’s BTC address, the funds will be lost forever. To reduce the likelihood of this occurring, an additional warning will be displayed when making deposits to the exchange. It will read:
“Only send Bitcoin (BTC) to this address.
Sending any other digital asset including Bitcoin Cash (BCH) or Tether will result in permanent loss of funds.”
GDAX go on to state their commitment to providing customers with the latest Bitcoin upgrades. They claim to be currently working on additional scalability improvements to help further reduce fees and increase the network’s capacity. These include “transaction batching and UTXO management.”
Finally, GDAX are appealing to anyone interested in working on scalability protocols such as the Lightning Network to contact them. They are currently hiring staff in New York, London, and San Francisco.
Since the announcement earlier this week that both Coinbase and Bitfinex have also implemented SegWit transactions, transaction fees on the Bitcoin network have fallen to historic lows.
We've reached a major milestone! ? $BTC tx fees are now at an ALL TIME LOW. We are now seeing transactions below 1 sat / byte for the first time ever. You can send #bitcoin for ~0.1 cents ( ~100 satoshis ) per transaction. ?? ?#bitcoinisscaling #segwit pic.twitter.com/DZy7h5yYJK
— Armin van Bitcoin âš¡ (@ArminVanBitcoin) February 22, 2018
Evidently, SegWit is helping to ease congestion on the Bitcoin network and this in turn is restoring the original cryptocurrency’s usability. As additional companies and wallet providers begin to integrate the upgrade, and more scaling techniques become available, the utility of the Bitcoin network is only set to grow.