After five months and two days of waiting, the Taproot update has finally come to light on the Bitcoin network (BTC). The feat took place on November 14th at around 04:00 am (Brasilia time). As scheduled, Taproot was enabled on block 709,632, which had 2,035 transactions.
Among them, three were special for the Brazilian public, as they were transactions placed by enthusiasts João Noctus, Narcélio Filho and Ottosch. The three contributed transactions number four, five and six, respectively.
Taproot changes subscriptions and privacy
The update, completed on June 12, has been in the works for seven years. It combines complex transactions with simple transactions, in order to generate more privacy for BTC. For example, multi-signature transactions can be condensed into a single transaction.
With that, it becomes more difficult to identify who was the author of that operation. In addition to privacy, transactions take up less space without overwhelming the blockchain. As a result, the costs of this type of operation are expected to be lower.
Taproot does this by replacing the current BTC signature protocol with Schnorr signatures. These are faster subscriptions that increase transaction privacy as well as facilitate the implementation of lightweight smart contracts.
This was the first major update on the network since the implementation of SegWit, in 2017. At the time, SegWit contributed to reducing the size of transactions, making costs cheaper. But the main positive factor of the update was that it paved the way for other scalability solutions, such as Lightning Network (LN).
Brazilians make history
To mark the implementation of Taproot, the three Brazilians performed a simple but highly symbolic act. Each of them programmed a transaction to pass exactly in block 709,632.
In addition to the transaction, small messages were recorded, confirming the moment. As shown in the image below, messages came out in each of the respective transactions;
“We made the first transactions with Taproot in history! I did the fifth, with the satoshis that Márcio Gandra sent to the Moon. The fourth was from João Noctus’ muggle making fun of me and the sixth was from Otto”, explained Narcelio.
“There’s nothing that special. It’s just because it’s nice to have a transaction right in the first block. Make fun of being the first or one of the first and write some message in the transaction”, explained Otto.
The act, despite being merely symbolic, places Brazil once again in the history of the BTC. Narcelio himself, by the way, had already made history in June when he received a BTC transaction directly from Lua.
Taproot’s arrival was celebrated by the entire community. Peter Wuille, Bitcoin Core developer and one of Taproot’s supporters, thanked to the community for their support. And, in fact, updates are meaningless unless the community makes use of them. Now it’s up to users and developers to drive Taproot adoption.
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