The activation of the Bitcoin Taproot update can occur on the morning of Sunday, November 14th. Less than 220 blocks remain to the designated block height 709 632.
Taking into account the fact that with the “reference” stability of mining 144 blocks are created per day, the activation of the update should be expected in the morning of November 14 Moscow time. Taproot will be one of the largest updates to the Bitcoin network following the activation of SegWit in August 2017. Taproot
represents a soft fork of Bitcoin that will improve scripting and privacy.
This update also includes the MAST technology – Merklized Abstract Syntax Trees, which will help to increase the efficiency and “closeness” of smart contracts, revealing only certain parts of them when spent and hiding the source of transactions. The update will also enhance the privacy of the Lightning Network by making payment channels similar to regular BTC transactions.
To prepare for the rollout of the update, BIP9 and the Speedy Trial accelerated activation mechanism were used, in which miners and mining pools helped coordinate the deployment of Taproot. For the successful execution of Speedy Trial, the update had to be supported by 90% of miners. In May, Taproot was voted on by the largest Bitcoin mining pools, including F2Pool and AntPool.
Many in the Bitcoin community were worried that activating Taproot could split the chain. However, it is unlikely that any large miners will want to run alternative software and reject blocks containing Taproot format transactions. Given that the Taproot update is compatible with previous versions of Bitcoin software and tied to the history of the blockchain, a node with old software will not be able to reject a version of the chain that includes blocks with Taproot format transactions and leave it outside the main Bitcoin blockchain. Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dash Jr clarified that a chain split should not be confused with a hard fork.
“The old node is a forced fork for every soft fork supported by other nodes. If we have a lot of old nodes, the rules will not be applied consistently and the economic sector of Bitcoin will pressure to support a hard fork or other version of Taproot removal software –
wrote on Twitter, Luke Dash Jr.
As a major update, Taproot could further boost Bitcoin’s price. On November 10, Bitcoin set a new maximum of $ 69,000, but soon fell to almost $ 5,000 and is now trading at about $ 64,000. It is believed that the Taproot update is already “embedded” in the price of Bitcoin. Therefore, after activating Taproot, Bitcoin with a high degree of probability can exit the consolidation phase and test the $ 70,000 level, rushing to new heights.
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