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Bitcoin Core 13.1 includes the segregated witness (segwit) soft-fork. The release notes say:

Segregated witness (segwit) is a soft fork that, if activated, will allow transaction-producing software to separate (segregate) transaction signatures (witnesses) from the part of the data in a transaction that is covered by the txid.

How do I activate segwit in Bitcoin Core 13.1? I couldn't find a command-line option for enabling it.

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SegWit has to be activated on the network first. Signaling will start on the 15th of November. When there is a difficulty period where 95% of the blocks signal readiness for SegWit, it will be activated after another two weeks of fallow.

Creating SegWit transactions before it is activated on the network can lead to complete loss of funds.

After it has been activated, you can use SegWit by providing the sender a SegWit address (similar to a P2SH address). Likewise, to send a SegWit transaction, the recipient has to generate a SegWit address for your use.

This means that only wallets that already support SegWit will be recipients of SegWit transactions.

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  • Is segwit address always p2sh-address? Or are new standard output scripts allowed by new client software? I see TX_WITNESS_V0_KEYHASH and TX_WITNESS_V0_SCRIPTHASH constants in sources but are they used?
    – amaclin
    Oct 30, 2016 at 13:22
  • They are standard, relayed, and accepted, but there is no way to specify an address for them directly.
    – Pieter Wuille
    Oct 30, 2016 at 23:17
  • Only ~35% of the network supports it currently (source)…
    – Geremia
    May 5, 2017 at 23:02

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