Litecoin Mining Pool BW.com Mines First SegWit Block

Litecoin Segregated Witness (SegWit) activation appears to be creeping closer as BW mining pool mines its first SegWit block.

The altcoin’s fortunes have increased dramatically in recent weeks on speculation SegWit would begin, despite allegations of sabotage by certain community members.

Creator Charlie Lee broadcast the BW event via Twitter on Tuesday.

BW just mined their first SegWit-signaling block! Thanks @www_bw_com for the support! From all Litecoin users, miners, and traders. pic.twitter.com/lYarjQmr6Y — Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) April 12, 2017

BW controls around 6.6 percent of mining power for Litecoin, meaning that its signaling of SegWit would push overall mining support over the 75 percent boundary needed for full activation. The figure currently stands at just under 74 percent.

Lee had previously appealed to Litecoin users to facilitate a user-activated soft fork (UASF) after rumors appeared that anti-SegWit miners were deliberately halting its progress.

In Bitcoin’s SegWit process, meanwhile, it appears that global corporation Microsoft is notionally also behind a UASF.

In a tweet on Tuesday, the head of decentralized identity Daniel Buchner said that “by default, all (Bitcoin) full nodes and clients used in Microsoft’s open source decentralized identity implementations will signal” for it.

By default, all #Bitcoin full nodes and clients used in Microsoft’s open source decentralized identity implementations will signal for #UASF — Daniel Ƀ (@csuwildcat) April 11, 2017

Buchner had issued a thinly-veiled warning to Bitcoin Unlimited supporters against SegWit at the end of March. “To the BU folks threatening a 51% attack: Imagine a decentralized identity client, running an SPV that blocks BU, shipping to 1 billion PCs,” he wrote.