Though the proof of work (POW) of bitcoin has become a complicated one, there is some relief with the layer one becoming more efficient with the help of Segregated Witness (SegWit) usage. As far as the layer two, infrastructure is being created with distributed ledger technology’s (DLT) Liquid sidechain through the Lightning Network. The key factor is that it reduces network fees for users.

Adoption

Currently, SegWit adoption represented ~50% of all transactions and allowed individual bitcoin transactions to consume less block space than what it was before. As a result, users would have to pay less in accumulated fees to reach the same transactions number. Additionally, it enables more than 2MB block size limit. Though there was some strong opposition before it was activated, the upgrade represented an increasing percentage of the network thus helping users with a drop in network fees.

In 2017, scaling of bitcoin centered on SegWit activation thus resulting in splitting into two factions. This led the creation of bitcoin cash whereas the existing network adapted it through user activated soft fork. Now, ASICboost is increasing the efficiency of mining by 20 percent to find blocks. This helps miners especially in a bearish market and could make a big difference between profitable and not profitable.

Energy Savings

Last month, Linux-based bitcoin mining system, a fully open source, has verified ASIC boost capacity on Antminer S9s. This resulted in energy savings of about 13 percent and allowed Bitmain to come out with upgraded software allowing an overt ASICboost relative to the earlier restrictions. Following the upgrade, overt ASICboost usage has increased to 12 percent from 5 percent within a few days.

As far as Overt ASICboost is concerned, it is here to say and will grow in not only popularity but also due to its importance. That is mainly because its competitiveness since any miner without it will struggle to compete. There is no doubt that mining will become increasingly competitive as the race continued among the rivals. That will mean SegWit transactions will also grow continuously due to its fee structure economics, which remains cheap relative to non-SegWit transactions.

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