Bitcoin network gets its first upgrade in four years

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The Bitcoin network is getting the most ambitious upgrade in years. Taproot aims to optimize data protection and user-friendliness in the world’s largest cryptocurrency.

The soft fork Taproot by Bitcoin core developer Greg Maxwell was brought into play for the first time in January 2018. Taproot aims to improve data protection, among other things, by improving Bitcoin’s scripts. After weeks of voting, miners around the world have now approved the Bitcoin upgrade. However, it will take several months before it is implemented.

Taproot was launched using the Speedy Trial deployment method. Miners and mining pools help with the implementation. The willingness to soft fork is signaled in the mined blocks. The upgrade is only considered confirmed if 90 percent of a total of 2016 blocks have agreed. This was the case on June 11th, like bitcoin-2go.de reports.

However, the changes in the Bitcoin network will only come into effect in November. The reason is that by then all possible mistakes should be weeded out. After the upgrade, there should be even more privacy and efficiency in transactions, which would primarily affect smart contracts. By using so-called hash trees, users can define transaction conditions without disclosing other information from the blockchain.

For observers, the planned upgrade is a big thing, such as CNBC writes. On the one hand, the Bitcoin network shows that it is able to drive developments. In contrast to the dispute over Segwit in 2017, the Taproot upgrade met with huge approval. In addition, Bitcoin could make up ground against Ethereum with Taproot in the area of ​​smart contracts and defi applications, experts are convinced.

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