In an attempt to tackle expensive bitcoin transaction fees and slow processing times, two leading cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase and Bitfinex, announced Tuesday they have rolled out a software update that they hope will address mounting concerns.

The update, called Segregated Witness (SegWit), is a soft-fork software update that alters the transaction process of the cryptocurrency bitcoin BTCUSD, -2.15% by increasing block-size limits, alleviating “block bloat.”

“New exchanges like Bitfinex and Coinbase integrating SegWit is great news for bitcoin,” Alex Sunnarborg, founding partner of Tetras Capital said.

“The most noticeable changes in the short term should be more efficiency when transacting — a user can expect to see decreased transaction fees and improved speed (as a result of being able to fit more SegWit transactions in bitcoin blocks due to the separation of ‘witness’ data),” he said.

Speed and transaction costs are two major issues facing the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies. Critics argue conventional payment systems such as credit cards, that can handle thousands of transactions per minute for a fraction of the cost, will be hard to dethrone. And for now, this seems to be the case. According to transaction and data site blockchain.info, the average confirmation time of a bitcoin transaction on Feb. 19 was 116.12 minutes.

blockchain.info

The news is also being welcomed by the mining community. As transaction costs and confirmation times rise, miners’ work is becoming more inefficient, especially as electricity costs associated with mining are growing.

Read: In one chart, here’s how much it costs to mine bitcoin in your state

SegWit is an evolution of the failed Segwit2x upgrade. Segwit2x was a proposed hard fork in 2017 that would have created a new version of bitcoin that aimed to address the slow confirmation speeds. However, at the last minute, the split was cancelled over security concerns.

The latest change has been greeted with much more enthusiasm.

“SegWit provides not only an immediate benefit for users, but also a foundation for future bitcoin development. We are delighted that through this implementation we can provide our customers with bitcoin withdrawal fees that are up to 20 percent lower, as well as faster-than-ever transaction speeds,” Paolo Ardoino, Bitfinex CTO said in a blog post.

Once implemented, bitcoin will join Litecoin, DigiByte and Vertcoin as digital currencies to adopt the SegWit technology.