Several exchanges and wallets have now enabled a concept called SegWit. In fact, over 50% of the transactions recorded on the Bitcoin network are actually Segwit transactions.
Segregated Witness, or SegWit, is a soft fork upgrade to the Bitcoin network; a renowned Bitcoin core developer, Peter Wuille, conceptualized it in 2015 to address transaction malleability and scalability of the Bitcoin network. Before implementing SegWit, Bitcoin users would exploit the transaction malleability flaw in Bitcoin to alter the transaction signature of the unconfirmed transaction. These malicious people would do it to hoax an exchange or an individual to receive double the funds from that exchange or individual.
To fix the transaction malleability flaw, SegWit removes the witness data from the transaction data. So, even when a malicious person tries to alter the signature of the unconfirmed transaction, it does not affect the transaction identifier at all. Additionally, when the witness data is removed from the 1MB block and pushed to an extended block, it frees space for more transactions to be recorded per second. Thereby, increasing transaction speed and reducing transaction fees.
Now that we understand Segregated Witness, let us dive into the top SegWit wallets.
Ledger Nano S and X.
Ledger is one of the biggest hardware wallets companies in the world today. It has the Ledger Nano S and Ledger Nano X, the latest release that has Bluetooth connectivity. Ledger was the first hardware wallet to support SegWit, and its SegWit capability is specific to Bitcoin transactions. According to Ledger’s website, the Nano natively supports 1,000+ coins, including most of the major coins and ERC20 tokens.
TREZOR.
Trezor was the first Bitcoin hardware wallet, and a company called SatoshiLabs released it. Trezor wallets were launched way back in August 2014, and these wallets have been supporting Segwit since 2017. Satoshi Labs has two hardware wallets: Trezor One and Trezor T, the latest release. Both Wallets support more than 500 altcoins. It’s important to note that Trezor now supports Ripple (XRP).
Electrum.
It is a lightweight bitcoin wallet that is free to download. Electrum is such an old Bitcoin wallet, literally, it has been around since 2011 and it’s available for Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, and Android. It’s also among the first wallets that implemented SegWit for its users.
GreenBits/GreenAddress (Mobile/Desktop wallet)
They are both SegWit enabled wallets that come from GreenAddressitLimited. They are open-source wallets with top-notch security. Amazingly, they are two of two multi-signature wallets. So, you control one private key and GreenAddressitLimited controls the other.
GreenAddress is a SegWit enabled Desktop and iOS wallet.
Green Bits is a SegWit enabled Android wallet.
Exodus.
It is a multi-currency wallet that supports over 103 cryptocurrencies. The Exodus wallet is one of the most appealing wallets in the cryptocurrency world. Actually, Exodus is renowned for its flexible user interface that is easy to use by newbies. This wallet supports both, SegWit and Legacy transactions and, on top of that, it is also compatible with the Trezor hardware wallet.
SegWit paper wallets.
A paper wallet is a mechanism for storing Bitcoins offline as a physical document. Paper wallets are not secure enough though because, once you lose the paper or it rips, you lose your coins as well. SegWit paper wallet is a paper printout of your Bitcoin public and private keys, as well as a QR code that you can scan to send Bitcoins.
Final word.
SegWit addresses are the newest addresses format and they start with a three or bc1. It’s also important to note that the only way we can actually scale the Bitcoin network is to use SegWit because it enables more transactions to be recorded per second. Besides, SegWit addresses are backward compatible so you can easily transfer funds from a SegWit Bitcoin address to a Legacy Bitcoin address.
