On August 1, 2017, a user-activated soft fork (User Activated Soft Fork \u2013 UASF) was activated in the Bitcoin network, enabling the activation of the Segregated Witness (SegWit) protocol. This date is celebrated in the community as Bitcoin Independence Day.<\/p>\n
SegWit is Bitcoin’s largest upgrade to date. Its aim was to further scale, reduce transaction fees and increase the block size limit. The road to SegWit proved highly contentious, fracturing the community into two irreconcilable camps. One camp subsequently created its own cryptocurrency \u2014 Bitcoin Cash \u2014 born from a hard fork.<\/p>\n
Until then, all significant modifications to the source code were typically activated via MASF (Miner Activated Soft Fork) \u2014 a mechanism by which readiness to upgrade is signalled by the majority of miners. A situation arose where a large influence on the final decision was exerted by representatives of large companies and mining pools.<\/p>\n
A substantial portion of the latter resisted activation of SegWit; however, in the end the situation was resolved thanks to the efforts of a broad community backing the UASF scenario.<\/p>\n
The UASF concept involves avoiding network upgrades by signaling from miners: instead, the soft fork is activated on a specified date, defined by full nodes. This model is called the economic majority.<\/p>\n
The idea was quickly picked up by the faction that adheres to decentralisation principles and also received support from Bitcoin maximalists. Despite that UASF faced certain challenges, on August 1, 2017 activation occurred.<\/p>\n
On August 8, the activation of SegWit was fixed and the \u201cpoint of no return\u201d was passed. After it, two weeks remained until the protocol activation, and finally, on August 24, 2017 at 01:57 UTC on block 481,824 the event occurred.<\/p>\n
Following the adage \u201cdon\u2019t trust, but verify,\u201d Bitrefill\u2019s CTO John Carvalho later asked how one could reliably know that the UASF activation hadn\u2019t been the work of some single organisation controlling the nodes.<\/p>\n
Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, replied that this was undoubtedly the coordinated effort of the whole community. He added that since then many users have begun to recognise the importance of running their own economic nodes as a counterweight to centralised interests.<\/p>\n
\n#UASF<\/a> was clearly grass roots, with many hodler economic nodes, a good selection of ethos aligned business, bitcoin embassies & community groups. Since then more people are taking seriously the need to run their own economic node to harden Bitcoin against centralised interests.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Adam Back (@adam3us) October 23, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n