Can someone please help to confirm my understanding of SegWit ?
My understanding:
- Originally, signatures are included in each block alongside each transaction, these signatures can be read by nodes to prove validity of each transactions.
- With SegWit, signatures are omitted from the blocks, but instead recorded in a side-chain called Witness blockchain.
- Whoever wants to verify a transaction can refer to the corresponding signature from the Witness side-chain
- The total amount of data remains the same, but since we now have two separate chains running in parallel, the size of each block is effectively doubled.
Questions:
- Is my understanding correct please?
- Does it mean that for old-fashioned Nodes who don’t look at Witness side-chain, they can only verify transactions up to the Segwit implementation, and will have to reject new blocks because they won't find a valid signature within the new blocks?
- In that case, how is it a soft-fork? Since all nodes will be forced to upgrade in order to operate. (by here I am sure I am wrong somewhere..)
- Finally, do miners and nodes now keep both chains and when they broadcast the new block, they also broadcast the new Witness block?
Thank you very much.