The Real Numbers Behind Segwit Activation

It’s important to get your maths right; tricky, even boring though it may be, recent claims from a CryptoNews article have some very flawed claims. The key quote if you don’t want to wade through the whole article is this: “Alternatively stated, the activation of Segwit will likely result in a 75 percent increase on the current 1 MB block size if implemented in an optimum ecosystem.”

For a 400% increase you gain 75%. They are using one form of TX on Segwit and another on standard blocks.

A true comparison:

SegWit (4MB) –  8,865 P2PKH TX in a block

Bitcoin (4MB) –   20,940 P2PKH TX in a block

In essence, Segwit loses on a fair playing field. The graph below is TX rates if Bitcoin was maintained at a rate linked to Moore’s law vs the cap: