Litecoin Sees Spike in Support for Scaling Solution SegWit

A scaling solution originally developed for the bitcoin blockchain may soon get its first trial run on litecoin.

The percentage of the litecoin network signaling to enact the Segregated Witness (SegWit) upgrade reached record highs today according to Litecoinblockhalf.com, climbing to 58.33% of nodes and miners operating the software.

The figures mark a notable jump from last week when only around 25% of devices keeping track of the network's history were signaling for activation. Much of the increase comes from large mining pool F2Pool's decision to signal.

According to Litecoinpool.org, F2Pool currently produces over one-third of the hashing power behind the litecoin network.

While the figure marks an impressive uptick, SegWit still requires 75% of the network agree to adopt the proposal, a figure that is 20% below bitcoin's required 95% threshhold. Because of this differential, many view litecoin as a potential "sandbox" for discovering potential bugs and vulnerabilities possibly hidden in the nascent software.

Originally proposed in December 2015, SegWit sought to boost the bitcoin blockchain's transaction capacity by cleverly altering how data was stored by the network. Still, it has become mired in controversy, as a small group of vocal bitcoin users have pushed for alternative solutions.

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