Since 2017, with significant upgrades, over 90% of the Bitcoin network's computing power supports it. The Taproot soft fork is set to launch in November.
Since the introduction of Segregated Witness (SegWit) on August 23, 2017, Bitcoin is gearing up for another major upgrade. With over 90% of the network's blocks signaling support, exceeding 1815, consensus has been reached. The long-awaited Bitcoin improvement proposal, "Taproot," soft fork is set to activate in November after a four-year delay.
As the blockchain industry continues to attract talent and witness technological advancements, Bitcoin has often been perceived as slow and costly to transact. Previous major updates such as Segregated Witness and the Lightning Network scalability solutions have not seen high adoption rates. However, this update is viewed as a milestone and a significant positive development for Bitcoin.
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Taproot
Taproot was first proposed on 1/23/2018 by Bitcoin core developers and former Blockstream CTO Gregory Maxwell with the aim of enhancing Bitcoin's privacy and security, as well as increasing the flexibility of Bitcoin's smart contracts.
The Taproot upgrade will be combined with Schnorr signatures, which merge multiple signatures into a single signature, allowing Bitcoin to conduct complex, multi-step transactions that appear as a single normal transaction. Therefore, Taproot can further enhance privacy for wallets involving multi-signatures or transactions based on the Lightning Network.
90% Hash Rate Support
Since Taproot requires activation through a soft fork upgrade, the support of mining pools and miners becomes crucial for the upgrade. Currently, 90% of the hash rate has announced support for the Taproot upgrade. Taprootactivation records all mining pool support, and Taproot.watch has created an interesting video about it.
Snowden Criticizes Taproot
Despite receiving strong support from developers and major mining pools, Edward Snowden, the former CIA contractor who revealed the PRISM program and continues to monitor Bitcoin's development, stated: "Taproot does not solve Bitcoin's privacy problems, and in fact, makes privacy worse."
He pointed out:
Bitcoin has failed in terms of privacy. Everyone just shouts about Taproot, but look at what Taproot actually does? Taproot does not solve Bitcoin's privacy issues. Some arguments even suggest that this will lead to more fragmented wallet addresses, making forensic analysis easier, thereby making privacy worse.
Snowden once again praised Zcash and Monero, calling them the most excellent cryptocurrencies in terms of privacy.
Response to Snowden's Criticism
Chief Strategy Officer of the Human Rights Foundation, Alex Gladstein, tweeted stating that he greatly respects Snowden for sacrificing so much to expose state surveillance to the world, but he distorted the Taproot upgrade, with his misrepresentations including:
- Taproot worsens Bitcoin's privacy
- The Lightning Network is a prank
- Attacks on Bitcoin core developers
- Hyping NFTs and privacy coins
Ryan Selkis, founder of crypto research firm Messari, tagged Snowden on Twitter and criticized:
His role is to be a truth-teller and he does it extremely well, but those who truly win this war, the people who make the crypto industry too big to fail, all know that anonymous transactions will kill the entire ecosystem.