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The segwit soft fork is not optional, clients that do not upgrade in time will be broken much like a hard fork.

• ikeboy 11y ago
  If the fork is successful, then the longer chain will always be the segwit one. The only problem is if the longer chain is non-segwit, but that means either 1. There isn't a segwit supermajority or 2. It's longer by very few blocks, perhaps only one In the first, nobody should be using segwit to send money and therefore there's no breakage, and in the second the threat isn't increased that the threat of any orphan block, which happen occasionally. If you're accepting single-conf then you're accepting the risk of orphan blocks, so this isn't worse.
  • thescriptkiddie 11y ago
    It's not about which chain is longer. With segwit as a soft fork old clients will recognize new blocks as valid but fail to see segwit transactions, effectively failing silently. With segwit as a hard fork old clients will not accept new blocks and fail loudly. In both cases old clients are forced to upgrade in order to keep using the network.
    • ikeboy 11y ago
      All segwit transactions are valid under the old rules. Old clients can continue sending transactions as they did before, as I mentioned, segwit only repurposes non-standard transactions, so it should have no effect on someone using the network normally.