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August 1, 2017Protocol & scalingConsensus activationsdocumented

A user-activated soft fork forces SegWit's hand

BIP 148 nodes began rejecting blocks that did not signal support for Segregated Witness.

After miners had declined to signal for months, the proposal moved the decision to the economic nodes: run this software and blocks that ignore SegWit stop counting for you. Faced with a possible chain split, miners activated SegWit through a competing mechanism days earlier, so BIP 148 never had to orphan anything.