Bitcoin Users Adopt Upgrade: The Asset Reaches Major Scaling Milestone

The digital currency Bitcoin has quietly reached a major milestone in its quest to reach the masses.

The software upgrade called Segregated Witness, or SegWit, which has been designed to speed up the transaction speed of Bitcoin, is gaining traction. In just the past three days, the number of transactions using the technology doubled to more than 30 percent. This information was given by SegWit.Party website, which tracks the data. The following chart shows the percentage of transactions using SegWit in the past week.

The cryptocurrency network became clogged, as Bitcoin grew popularity in the past year. It made transaction times and fees soar. The transaction costs climbed to as high as $55 in December, the BitInfoCharts informed. SegWit is meant to solve that problem by taking some of the work needed to confirm transactions off the main chain, speeding up the process.

Major crypto-asset exchanges Coinbase Inc. and Bitfinex started using SegWit this month, helping to speed up adoption. The upgrade was first released in August.

In December the transaction fees have dropped to a four-month low of $2, though confirmed transactions per day have also dropped to around 200,000 from more than double that number