One of the Biggest Upgrades That Bitcoin Has Had for Years is Now 'Locked In'
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One of the Biggest Upgrades That Bitcoin Has Had for Years is Now 'Locked In'

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2 years ago

The Taproot soft fork is set to enhance the scripting capabilities of the Bitcoin network — and improve privacy.

One of the Biggest Upgrades That Bitcoin Has Had for Years is Now 'Locked In'

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One of the most significant improvements seen in Bitcoin’s protocol for several years is set to go ahead after receiving enough support from miners.

For the Taproot upgrade to commence, 90% of miners in a two-week period needed to include a small piece of information that indicated they were in favor of the proposals.

A website called Taproot Watch has now declared that this upgrade has been “locked in” because 1,815 of the 2,016 blocks over this period have signaled they are ready.

The soft fork is set to enhance the scripting capabilities of the Bitcoin network — and improve privacy.

It’s quite a big achievement. Because no single person makes decisions over improvements that are made to Bitcoin’s code, it can take quite a bit of effort to get the community to agree on something.

When Does Taproot Activate? 

Users won’t feel the benefits of Taproot until November at the earliest. In the meantime, miners and nodes are going to upgrade their software.

Bitcoin isn’t the only blockchain that’s undergoing some upgrades right now. Ethereum is gearing up for the London hard fork — a system-wide upgrade that includes Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559.

Instead of sending gas fees to miners so transactions get included in a block, these fees are now going to be sent to the network instead. Miners will only end up getting compensated if the user decides to tip them.

As you might expect, the proposal has proved controversial among miners as it will starve them of revenue. However, supporters hope that this will help make transaction fees more predictable — and could help take some of the heat out of the market.

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