The Bitcoin network is in the headlines today with the activation of Taproot, which is one of the most important enhancements to the network since 2017.
Segregated Witness, popularly known as “SegWit,” was the most recent upgrade, and it was originally implemented to alleviate Bitcoin‘s scaling problem.
Woohoo! #Bitcoin #Taproot has activated! 🥕🚀🌒Thank you Bitcoin developers for years of hard work and the community for the support. You can donate SATs to devs here: https://t.co/w85twmQJMAExciting future ahead! ⚡️ pic.twitter.com/GJSWT4MOO9— Bitcoin LightningNetwork+ News ⚡️ (@BTC_LN) November 14, 2021
Taproot is a soft fork of the Bitcoin network that aims to increase scripting and privacy. Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree is another feature it provides (MAST), as reported by Taproot.watch.
“[MAST] can help make smart contracts more efficient and private by only revealing the relevant parts of the contract when spending.”
According to Bitcoin miner Alejandro De La Torre, the upgrade would also include something known as Schnorr signatures, which basically renders multi-signature transactions illegible by the recipient’s computer. Mining pools and individual miners came to a 90 percent lock-in consensus between blocks 709,488 and 709,632, which resulted in this activation.
The previous SegWit update was intended to address transaction malleability while also boosting the scalability of the Bitcoin network. It was implemented in December 2013. Taproot, on the other hand, is focused on three primary areas of improvement: optimization, privacy, and smart contracts.
The Key and Signature Aggregation feature will now allow for the aggregation of public keys and signatures, which will help with optimization. When a cryptocurrency exchange delivers 100 transactions to 100 different recipients, they may now combine all 100 public keys into a single key and all 100 signatures into a single signature.
Smart Contracts: #Bitcoin Script has a 10kbyte size limit which will be removed, allowing for vastly larger scripts, aka Taproot contracts. It also removes the cap for opcodes, which allows for more flexibility in the future. This results in “smarter” contracts, DAOs, and more.— Bitcoin LightningNetwork+ News ⚡️ (@BTC_LN) November 13, 2021
Only after reaching a 90 percent consensus among Bitcoin mining nodes on June 12 was the update put into operation. Despite the fact that the Bitcoin community decided to lock in, the rollout did not take place until November. The months-long wait was intended to allow for adequate testing. This was supposed to make it less likely that something would go wrong during the update.
Several community-driven hard and soft forks have occurred on the Bitcoin network. The current upgrade, on the other hand, will not “immediately increase the network’s capabilities and privacy.” It will take some time to complete. However, the benefits will take years to materialize.
In an interview with Natalie Brunell, Jimmy Song, a Bitcoin programmer and technical specialist, expressed similar sentiments. Naturally, famous crypto-enthusiasts were eager to applaud this monumental achievement. Anthony Pompliano, for example, tweeted,
The Taproot upgrade for Bitcoin has officially activated.Congratulations and thank you to every developer, miner, and Bitcoiner who made this happen. ⚡️— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) November 14, 2021
