What happens if segregated witness never reaches the 95% adoption threshold from miners? Will it still take effect for those transactions where the miners have adopted it?
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2 Answers
"This BIP is to be deployed by version-bits BIP9. Exact details TDB."
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4cpl1y/segregated_witness_when_and_how_does_it_activate/
As soon as testing is complete final details should be determined. It sounds like a segwit soft fork is possible
There will not be a need to wait for a 95% adoption threshold:
"A main benefit of the current Segregated Witness design is that it can be deployed as a soft fork. Once the code is accepted and merged, only miners will need to upgrade; all other users can change their software if and whenever they want to, with no risk of being thrown off the network."
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1I'm pretty sure this is incorrect. SegWit will only activate after 95% miner acceptance. There will be a soft fork and it will be backward compatible so users can update in their own time. But it still requires 95%.– JannesMay 22, 2016 at 1:11
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2The "only miners need to upgrade" is exactly the 95% threshold specified by BIP9. The fact that it is a softfork just makes it safe for non-miners to not update. It doesn't avoid the need for a 95% threshold. May 30, 2016 at 11:01
By current agreement Segregated Witness will only activate after it reaches 95% of the miners signaling readiness.
Sending Segregated Witness transactions before that would be foolish, as if they were to be included in a block, anyone would be able to spend the outputs before Segregated Witness is enforced. They are however, non-standard to current versions of Bitcoin Core.
If the 95% threshold is not achieved for an extended period of time, there might be a proposal to lower the threshold.
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1Note that segwit transactions are non-standard to all Bitcoin Core versions since 0.10, so they are unlikely to be mined (but still, don't bet on that). May 30, 2016 at 11:15