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Coinbase Announces 2018 SegWit Support As Third ‘Engineering Priority’

Wilma Woo | Dec 16, 2017 | 13:30

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Largest US cryptocurrency wallet and exchange Coinbase has confirmed it “plans” to support SegWit transactions in 2018.

SegWit Follows Security, Performance As Top Priority

In a blog post on Friday, the company’s vice president Dan Romero confirmed the timeframe, despite noting that SegWit, as a “new feature,” was only Coinbase’s third priority. In the post, published on Medium, Romeo wrote:

In terms of our engineering priorities, securely storing customer funds remains our top priority. […] Our next priority is to ensure that our platform remains performant during periods of peak volume. Following security and performance, we are focused on adding new features for our customers.

Coinbase bore the brunt of a huge influx of new users in recent weeks, which accompanied Bitcoin’s surge in value to $18,000.

Technical infrastructure struggled to cope, leading to downtime and delays processing transactions which had also occurred during Bitcoin’s lesser upshoot earlier this year.

Hey @Coinbase, if Segwit isn't even in the top 5 list of things your customers want, then why is "When is Segwit being implemented" the 2nd most popular question about Coinbase sent to the media? https://t.co/ayMCyl8Ug0

— I, Troll[dragonmint] (@brian_trollz) December 15, 2017

Legacy Providers Catch Up To SegWit

Despite facing criticism over its SegWit adoption, as well as its stance on the now-defunct SegWit2x hard fork, Coinbase appears to be maintaining its laissez-faire attitude to implementing the technology, which would give significant savings on fees to users among other advantages.

“Many of our customers have been asking for SegWit, and we’re working out a way to implement this upgrade safely,” Romero continued.

The Coinbase platform stores billions of dollars worth of bitcoin on behalf of its customers and Romero notes that any changes to the platform’s infrastructure require “significant planning and consideration for the security and stability of our platform.”

Coinbase meanwhile is not alone in its slow path to SegWit adoption. This week, fellow stalwart wallet provider Blockchain.info unveiled full support for the Bitcoin Cash hard fork, while similarly pushing back SegWit interaction until next year.

“In 2018 we will be rolling out support for SegWit within our wallet products,” its own blog post confirmed last month. In the post, Blockchain.info stated:

This will be a major and complex update to some of the most sensitive parts of our codebase, across a wide variety of platforms and devices, affecting billions in user transactions with potentially significant privacy implications.

What do you think about Coinbase’s SegWit support plans? Let us know in the comments below!

Images courtesy of Coinbase