LOCALBITCOINS IMPLEMENT SEGWIT IN ITS PLATFORM
As of today, all new Bitcoin addresses that are generated in LocalBitcoins.com will have the SegWit protocol implemented.
LocalBitcoins is one of the most popular bitcoin exchange services worldwide, allowing the purchase and sale of the cryptocurrency by national currencies in cash and bank transfer, in addition to other methods such as Paypal, Payoneer and gift cards. With the implementation of this update, one could expect a greater adoption of SegWit and with it the reduction of the Bitcoin network commissions, so saturated during the last months within the framework of the discrepancies about this scalability solution.
This information was disseminated through the Twitter account of the well-known platform. In the same thread of the announcement explain details of its implementation. One of these is that users will keep their old address in the LocalBitcoin wallet, until they receive a transaction and the next generated address will be a SegWit address that starts with a number 3.
The implementation of SegWit (an acronym for Segregated Witness) in the Bitcoin network was approved and added in the middle of last year. With this protocol, its developers seek to free space from the Bitcoin blocks, separating the signatures of each transaction and thus allowing a more efficient use of the memory space of the blocks.
This allows a greater space in the blocks, for a larger number of transactions, without increasing the block size. With this, you can increase the number of transactions processed by the network and generate a reduction in the commissions of the same.
From December 23 to 30, 2017, LocalBitcoins mobilized $ 87.9 million dollars, represented in more than 5,600 bitcoins worldwide, according to CoinDance. If you compare this volume with the one that was mobilized in the same week in the network, according to Blockchain.info, it comes to represent almost 0.3% of the bitcoin traded, approximately. This comparison is not representing the number of transactions, but the value managed by the network.
It is likely that the implementation of this service by LocalBitcoins, which is mainly used by individuals to exchange low volumes generating many transactions, could lead to a notable increase in SegWit transactions, which so far barely reach a little over 10% of the total network, according to SegWit.party.