Bitcoin Taproot Network Update To Be Activated This Week

The long-awaited Bitcoin (BTC) Taproot upgrade will be activated this week in 872 blocks, or roughly 6days.

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 spent, 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 a soft forkSchnorr, which improves privacy, scalability, speed and encodes multiple keys into one. This is a signature scheme that also allows a transaction to hide the existence of a MAST structure.

When combined with Schnorr signatures, Taproot will allowusers to mix transactions carried out by wallets with multisignature or temporary blocking, with wallets using exclusively single signatures, thereby allowing to hide the use of multisignatures.

Suggested by Bitcoin Core member and formerGregory Maxwell, CTO of major blockchain firm Blockstream, in 2018, the update was confirmed in mid-June of this year, after the minimum miner approval threshold of 90% was exceeded. Activation on the test network took place in early July.

As the event approaches, it is recommended to update your nodes. According to the Twitter account Taproot Signal, support for Taproot's Bitcoin nodes has reached 50.25%.

Source