Taproot soft fork is activated on the Bitcoin network

The update aims to improve the security and scalability of the first cryptocurrency blockchain

15.11.2021 - 08:45

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What’s new? The bitcoin network, on block number 709 632, has seen a soft fork, a long-awaited update that is designed to improve network performance, privacy, and blockchain efficiency. Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor believes that after the update, “bitcoin is getting smarter, faster, and stronger.”

#Bitcoin is getting smarter, faster, and stronger.— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) November 14, 2021

What will change after the update? The bitcoin blockchain has seen the introduction of Schnorr signatures, a higher privacy digital signature scheme. Another innovation is the ability to split smart contracts into separate pieces to reduce the size of the data. In addition, the introduction of Taproot will also greatly simplify future updates of the cryptocurrency by reforming the languages of the scripts it uses.

Taproot was voted on by 98% of miners. At the moment, just over half of the network's nodes supported the update. The rest use outdated software, which does not have access to the new features.

Statistics of the Taproot implementation by miners

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