As for the segwit thing, I am still quite opposed to the excision of cryptographic signatures from the holy ledger (also implying the introduction of 3rd trusted parties)..
It does no such thing. Every node that receives a block will receive the segwit data as well, with the exception (eventually) of new pruned nodes that are syncing below a checkpoint and would ignore the signatures anyway. The segwit data is referenced by a hash committed to the block and can't be changed, making it part of the ledger for all practical purposes.