Bitcoin enthusiasts are celebrating Taproot’s successful implementation after the block height of 709,632. This upgrade was highly anticipated since it was the largest change in bitcoin’s history, following the 2017 introduction of Segregated witness (Segwit). The upgrade was successful and the Bitcoin community began measuring Taproot usage.
Taproot has been activated on the Bitcoin Blockchain
Taproot officially became active on the Bitcoin (BTC), blockchain at 12:15 (EST), block height 709632, difficulty period 352, and block height 709632. The upgrade was long-awaited as it’s an improvement that’s taken seven years to complete.
709632 🎇
— jack⚡️ (@jack) November 14, 2021
Taproot allows you to use Bitcoin scripts in many different ways to increase privacy, security, and scalability. Taproot can be combined with Schnorr signatures, an enhancement that allows for smaller transactions and key aggregate. This provides multifaceted multisignature transaction options. According to Github’s codebase introduction, Schnorr has three main benefits.
- Security Provable: Schnorr Signatures are proven to be secure. Further details are available at: They can be easily forge under a selected message attack (SUF – CMA).
- Non-malleability. The SUF–CMA security Schnorr signatures suggests that they are not prone to malleability. ECDSA signatures, on the other hand are intrinsically malleable.
- Linearity – Schnorr signatures are a quick and simple method for multiple parties to create a signature which is valid for all their public keys.
The collaboration technique or key aggregation “is the building block for various higher-level constructions that improve efficiency and privacy, such as multi-signatures and others,” the Github description adds.
MAST (Merklized Alternative Script Tree) is used to combine the Schnorr signature system with MAST, which creates Tapscript. The Taproot activation page on Github now says: “Taproot locked-in. Thanks miners.” After Taproot was activated a great number of crypto supporters discussed the implementation on social media.
“The Taproot upgrade for Bitcoin has officially [been] activated,” bitcoin investor Anthony Pompliano tweetedFollowing the upgrade. “Congratulations and thank you to every developer, miner, and Bitcoiner who made this happen.” Another individual dubbed ‘Hashoveride’ tweeted:
Taproot activated! Bitcoin upgrade! This is the way consensus is created and how upgrades are made! It is slow and non-controversial. Y’all better recognise. [Bitcoin]You are ready to fly.
Bitcoin Developer Pieter Wuille: ‘At Long Last, BIP341/342 (“Taproot”) Are Active on Bitcoin Mainnet’
Pieter Wuille (Bitcoin Core developer) also talked about the success of the soft fork via Twitter, and thanked each member.
“At long last, BIP341/342 (“taproot”) are active on Bitcoin mainnet. Thanks to everyone involved for getting us this far,” Wuille tweeted. “The real work will be in building wallets/protocols that build on top of it to make use of its advantages. I’m very excited to see where that takes us,” the Bitcoin developer added. Additional bitcoin lovers shared dataTaproot is sometimes used wild. For instance, Alekos Filini wrote:
Modified version @bitcoindevkitThe transaction was completed. It’s a Taproot script-spend with a 1-of-2 multisig that uses the new `OP_CHECKSIGADD.` It looks like this is the first ever `OP_CHECKSIGADD` used on Bitcoin! It’s the third Taproot script-spend in the block, but the two coming in before didn’t use that opcode.
The blockchain analysis Open Exploration Tool, (oxt.me), tweeted Taproot’s use on the Bitcoin Blockchain after its successful implementation. “It’s happening #Taproot,” the oxt.me Twitter account saidTaproot sharing usage charts Bitcoiner Lyle PrattAlso, he spoke out about Taproot’s many benefits and explained his excitement.
“[Three] reasons I’m personally excited about Taproot,” Pratt wrote. “1) the upgrade process gave us a good recipe for future upgrades. 2) tappingroot will allow us to proliferate DLCs services, use cases and eventually bring them up to Lightning. 3) 1 mil+ participant multisig federations are now possible.”
When asked by another individual what the benefits of federated multi-sig for many participants would be, Pratt responded by noting: “Much more decentralized pools of signers or oracles are now possible. Pre-taproot about ~15 p2sh signers was the practical limit.”
What do you think about the successful implementation of the Bitcoin upgrade Taproot and the community’s opinion about the latest soft fork? Comment below to let us know your views on the subject.
Images CreditsShutterstock. Pixabay. Wiki Commons. OXT.me.
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