Newly Launched Bitcoin Optech Initiative Aims to Address BTC Scalability Issue

Published at: July 20, 2018

A team of Bitcoin (BTC) engineers has announced the launch of the Bitcoin Operations Technology Group (Bitcoin Optech) addressing the problem of Bitcoin’s scalability, according to their statement published July 20.

Bitcoin Optech is a non-profit organization backed by leading industry players like PayPal Board Member Wences Casares, executive of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Ltd John Pfeffer, and cryptocurrency research and development group Chaincode Labs.

At this stage, Bitcoin Optech focuses on “operational technical work, such as segwit usage, transaction batching, fee estimation and coin selection,” helping companies integrate the rapidly developing technology.

Working closely with engineers from companies using the Bitcoin network and open-source developers, Bitcoin Optech seeks to give the scalability problem full consideration by holding workshops for Bitcoin engineers, hosting an online forum for technical scaling issues, and producing a weekly newsletter.

One proposed solution to Bitcoin’s scalability issue — driven by the continuous growth of the network’s transaction numbers — is the Lightning Network (LN), a second layer payment option that allows transactions to occur off the blockchain.

A recent study suggesting that the Lightning Network is not as effective at routing payments as  was first believed was refuted by the LN co-founders and BTC developers, who noted that the Lightning Network is still in beta testing.

In mid-July, crypto payment gateway CoinGate launched a pilot program for 100 merchants to test transactions on a Bitcoin Lightning Network variant of their service.

Tags
Blockchain
Cryptocurrencies
Transactions
Lightning Network
Segwit
Related Posts
Share of SegWit-Spending Bitcoin Transactions Now Over 50%
The percentage of Segregated Witness (SegWit)-spending Bitcoin (BTC) transactions has reached 50.5%, or an all-time high, according to transactionfee.info statistics. SegWit solution to Bitcoin transactions SegWit is a proposed update to the Bitcoin Core, which is designed to reduce processing and wait times. Originally, the update was aimed at solving transaction malleability, a well-known weak spot in Bitcoin software. However, SegWit offers a range of other advantages and now the focus of attention has shifted from fixing transaction malleability to solving the problem of Bitcoin scaling. Explaining its metrics, transactionfee.info points out that a Bitcoin transaction can have multiple outputs …
Blockchain / Sept. 16, 2019
Bitcoin transaction fees briefly doubled yet remain exceptionally low
Got some Satoshi to send or Bitcoin (BTC) wallets to reorganize? It’s increasingly cheap to do so. According to an Arcane Research report, Bitcoin “transaction fees have stayed low since July 2021, showing no signs of rising.” There was, however, a small bump in transaction fees last week. Shown as a small jump at the tail end of the graph, clustering of the mempool pushed “up the average transaction fees per day over the past seven days to $691,000, a doubling since last Tuesday.” Nonetheless, the doubling in transaction fees is insignificant: transaction fees remained in a low range. Miners …
Adoption / March 9, 2022
Major Asian Ticketing Agency Accepts Bitcoin on Lightning Network
Vietnamese online ticketing agency Future.Travel now accepts Bitcoin (BTC) payments via the Lightning Network (LN), with funds being converted into local currency at the time of sale. To enable LN-based Bitcoin payments, Future.Travel collaborated with Canada-based tech firm Neutronpay, which will provide Future.Travel its multi-currency merchant platform, according to an April 20 announcement. With the newly integrated option, the BTC transaction processing time will ostensibly be cut down to three to four seconds in most cases. Eliminating fraud, reducing transaction processing time Overall, Future.Travel has been supporting BTC payments for over six years and recently added other cryptocurrencies like Litecoin …
Adoption / April 20, 2020
Cryptocurrency Exchange BitMEX Enables Native SegWit Support
Cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX added support for native segregated witness (SegWit) addresses for Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals, which lets users pay lower transaction fees. According to an announcement on Dec. 12, BitMEX now allows its users to withdraw Bitcoin to Bech32 addresses, the one that natively supports the segregated witness standard. Bitcoin address formats As the announcement explains, the Bitcoin network currently supports three address formats. The first one — Bitcoin’s original address format — is pay to public key hash (P2PKH), which starts with a 1. The second format is the pay to script hash (P2SH), which allows users to send …
Blockchain / Dec. 12, 2019
Some Coinbase Users Can’t Withdraw More Than $10 in Bitcoin a Day
Major United States-based cryptocurrency exchange and wallet service Coinbase is allegedly not letting some users withdraw more than $10 per day. On Feb. 2, a Redditor and self-described Coinbase user reported that Coinbase had put a $10 daily withdrawal limit for some users. The Reddit user, with handle Unholy_Crab1, claims that his subsequent application for higher withdrawal limits was denied by Coinbase. The Redditor has also shared a purported screenshot which shows that the maximum amount of daily withdrawal from Coinbase in Bitcoin (BTC) was $10 for his account. Source: Reddit As of press time, the complaint thread has amassed …
Blockchain / Feb. 3, 2020