Topic: Can Segregated Witness cause problems under contractual laws? (Read 136 times)

Hello,

First I need to say, I am few months into the world of crypto and a absolute newbie in terms of the technical aspectof things, so please bear with me in my effort to learn and understand.

In my understanding segregated witness was introduced as a solution to solve the problem of transaction malleability, this is where anyone could do small modifications which changed the transaction ID and subsequent transaction hash but not the content. This necessarily dint cause any problem to the function of the Bitcoin network but prevented more complex features being added such as lightning network and smart contracts. While addressing the transaction malleability problem of Bitcoin it also addressed the much contentious scaling issue surrounding Bitcoin.

A Bitcoin transaction could be considered as having two parts, that is the transaction data  & signature/witness data. Signature data verifies the persons involved and authenticates they sent/received the transaction. In SegWit this signature data is considered important only when transaction is being validated and of no value thereafter.

In a normal Bitcoin transaction both transaction data and signature data are included within one block and there is just one transaction hash, however with SegWit being implemented signature data is removed from the blocks and two hashes are created. That is a regular hash for the transaction data and a witness hash for the both transaction and signature data. Segwit by default discards the signature data and retains information only of the witness hash. This would essentially mean, though a transaction could be located it might create a problem when trying to identify the parties involved.

In essence what I understand is Segregated witness may result in making the authentication and legal proof of electronic contracts and transaction significantly difficult. In a world where individuals and companies are moving towards implementing electronic contracts and transactions on the Bitcoin network it is important to ensure transactions proved and authenticated in case there any legal issues and Segwit in my understanding does not faciliate this and for this reason it might affect the rate at which Bitcoin is adopted in coming years! What will be the solution to address this? Can someone please explain in simple terms considering I am pretty much of a noob and take time to understand. :-)

Thank you.