The long-awaited Bitcoin (BTC) Taproot update will be activated this week in 872 blocks, or roughly 6 days.
Taproot includes a solution called MAST (Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree), which allows smart contracts to be more efficient and confidential by showing only the relevant parts of the contract when spending, the rest is hidden. This will allow smart contracts, regardless of their complexity, to be treated like a regular blockchain transaction.
In addition, Taproot is accompanied by the Schnorr soft fork, which improves privacy, scalability, speed, and encodes multiple keys into one. It is a signature scheme that also allows a transaction to hide the existence of a MAST structure.
Combined with Schnorr signatures, Taproot will allow users to mix transactions carried out by multisignature or time-locked wallets with wallets that use solely single signatures, thereby obscuring the use of multisignatures.
Proposed by Bitcoin Core contributor and former CTO of large blockchain firm Blockstream Gregory Maxwell in 2018, the update was confirmed in mid-June this year, after the minimum approval threshold of 90% miners was exceeded. Testnet activation took place in early July.
It is recommended that you update your nodes as the event approaches. According to the Taproot Signal Twitter account, support for the Taproot Bitcoin node has reached 50.25%.
Bitcoin Node Taproot Support: 50.25%
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🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧Node count:
Taproot: 27917
Non-enforcing: 26955
Light: 40
Unknown: 643 pic.twitter.com/3sjplleDgi— Taproot Signal (@taproot_signal) November 8, 2021
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