Bitcoin Upgrades

The first significant upgrade happened in 2017 — Segregated Witness (SegWit). Its goal was to improve the network’s throughput by reducing the weight of transactions per block. Effectively, this increased the number of transactions that could be bundled per block.

Technically, the SegWit upgrade did this by removing the “witness data” that hold transaction signatures. 

Lastly, another important upgrade is the Lightning Network. Although it doesn’t tamper with Bitcoin Core software, it serves as a Layer 2 network on top of the Bitcoin network. This scalability solution is similar to Ethereum’s Polygon, Optimism, or Arbitrum.

Lightning Networks works by funding a payment channel, through which BTC is sent. Because LN payment channels can execute multiple transactions, without waiting for them to be mined first, this dramatically expands Bitcoin usability as a daily, near-instantly finalized payment system.