Segregated Witness (SegWit)
Also known as: SegWit, Signature Segregation, Bitcoin Protocol Upgrade
A Bitcoin protocol upgrade that separates signature data from transaction data to improve scalability and security.
Segregated Witness, or SegWit, is a protocol upgrade implemented in Bitcoin to separate witness data (digital signatures) from the core transaction data. This reduces the size of individual transactions, allowing more transactions to fit in a single block and increasing network throughput. SegWit also fixes transaction malleability, which is essential for building advanced features like the Lightning Network. First activated in 2017, SegWit is backward-compatible and adopted by many wallets and exchanges to improve efficiency and fee structure on the Bitcoin network.