Topic: Upgraded to SegWit (Read 443 times)

Didn't think a new topic is needed, but wanted to bump this reply.

Any chance the donation address will be updated to SegWit?

Just to clarify this you can sign and verify messages from bech32 addresses^* using Electrum but not using Core. As Quickseller said there is no standard yet but Electrum have implemented their own method.

* Messages are actually signed using public and private keys, not addresses.

That is correct. The default addresses are encapsulated SegWit (3..). You can generate bech32 addresses by starting with '-addresstype=bech32'.

Yeah Electrum is pretty much the only major software wallet supporting bc1 apart from Bitcoin Core (I've never used core so I'm not 100% sure, but according to https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bech32_adoption Core is indeed supporting Bech32. Probably something related to Core's 0.16 update) at the moment but if I'm not wrong then Ledger and Trezor too have support for bc1 (again this is via Electrum)

I am surprised it took this long to upgrade.

As a general rule, there is no need to consolidate these inputs in a transaction you send to yourself, unless you are moving funds to cold storage, or are otherwise protecting against a (potential) compromise of your private keys. You will generally save on transaction fees (and total block space) if you waited until you needed to pay someone ~0.094BTC and used the same inputs you used in txid ea631de...4937f341 to pay that person. Now if you need to pay someone ~0.094BTC, you can use that output, however, you will now be paying a second transaction fee for a one input, one output transaction. One might argue that necessary to confirm transaction fee rates are lower now than they will likely be in the future, so consolidating inputs will allow you to buy up block space at low rates now, so you can spend that money with a lower total fee later with a lower total fee (between the two transactions) later when transaction fees increase, however this probably will make less sense when you are spending that output a day or two later, like you could have done in 5998550...2a3f5351fe
the day after you consolidated inputs with 5942d70103a...2b3970b17, earlier that day.

If you operate under the presumption that a person believes there are benefits to using SegWit, I would advise them to start receiving bitcoin to SW addresses, to start sending change to SW addresses, and to send bitcoin from non-SW unspent outputs when doing so would not make their transactions unnecessarily large. This will result in this person to, overtime accumulate their bitcoin in SW addresses, and will not result in unnecessary transactions stored on the blockchain.

There does not yet appear to be a largely accepted standard for doing this yet. If you want to verify ownership/control over a SegWit address, you will need to be somewhat flexible in what you are willing to accept.

The only major wallet software supporting 'bc1....' addresses that I am aware of is electrum.

Unsure about signing a message using core but I have checked, you can sign a Segwit address using Electrum (atleast as of the 3.05 Version)

 Is it possible to sign a message using a SegWit address now that the core has updated to 0.16.0? Last time I researched, in January, I had not found a conclusive answer. What is the best way to prove ownership of an address?

That seems like a welcome change since slowly people are drifting towards SegWit (albeit some people being adamant on non implementation of SegWit) but I did have a question. Would it be possible to implement a dual address system? P2SH wrapped address as currently is being done as of this announcement and a native bc1 address so those who prefer to pay via the native wallets can do so. (I know there's cross compatibility and it's still possible to pay to the P2SH addresses).

But what I feel is adding a dual fee system would atleast spread awareness. People will atleast begin to recognise the address even if they pay to/from a regular address. Currently the first reaction from the "average" user when they see a bc1 address is "Hey, that's not an address! Give me a proper address" instead of maybe "Sorry my exchange doesn't support sending to a native address".

Just my two cents

Just a note that some may find interesting:

The forum now displays SegWit-in-P2SH addresses when asking for payments for evil-IP fees and copper-member promotions, and I will also be sending them to advertisers. Moderators can also use either type of SegWit address for their mod payments.

Upgrading to SegWit was especially important for the forum because we receive tons of small evil-IP fees, and this later results in massive consolidation transactions. P2SH-wrapped-SegWit will reduce the size of these by around 20%, which will be good for both the forum and the Bitcoin network. While using native SegWit addresses (starting with bc1) would be even more efficient, I don't consider it generally appropriate to use those yet because paying to them is not widely supported. And showing both types of address would create more confusion than it's worth, I think.

In the forum's case, upgrading required just upgrading bitcoind to 0.16 and changing two lines of code elsewhere. In some other cases it could be a little more complicated, depending on how exactly you are accepting/sending Bitcoin payments. There's no rush to upgrade to SegWit, especially for things like cold wallets; paying to non-SegWit addresses may well be supported for over a decade into the future, and there's no problem whatsoever with storing BTC in non-SegWit addresses. But in many cases upgrading will provide you with significant benefits, so it's something to think about.