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Showing posts with the label What Does "Activation" Actually Mean In Bitcoin?

What Does "Activation" Actually Mean In Bitcoin?

What Does "Activation" Actually Mean In Bitcoin? During the multiple issues with Bitcoin this year with soft and hard forks, and Segwit, I have read as much as I can about how all these changes are "deployed", eg BIP9, BIP91, BIP148, BIP's 141-146. However no matter how much I read I am still confused by it all and the terminology, such as "locking in", "signalling", "activation", "deployment". I understand Segwit was implemented in v0.13.1 (and above) of Bitcoin Core which was released on 27/10/2016. So all the Segwit changes have been in the Bitcoin Core software since that date ? So when "activation" of Segwit occurred - did that mean a flag within the Bitcoin client, say "ACTIVATION_FLAG", became true and then the Segwit functionality thus started to run - because it is contained inside an "if" block :- if (ACTIVATION_FLAG) { do Segwit stuff } However Segwit is a complex...