Bitcoin Forum

Can someone ELI5:

- Is this a hard fork or soft fork?

- A swap to a newer chain?

- If hard fork will bitcoin hodlers get free airdrop?


What date this year the update will happen?

Is this similar to the 'Segwit' update back in near fall in 2017?

What is TapRoot?

I'm incapable of explaining the technical aspects of it, but it's a soft fork, not a hard fork.  No new chain, it implements a more efficient script along with a more efficient script signing algorithm that're compatible with the same chain.  From what I've read the more efficient coding will allow more transactions per block, and thus result in a faster network and lower fees.  It also allows more complex transactions (like multi-sig) to consolidate signatures, reducing fees and improving privacy for those types of transactions.

This is from Bitcoin Core 0.21.1 release notes (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/fab53ea72fd6c763ddc2627bc83603a1c78d548a#diff-31e4bd5a2c0d157ee93281e24c5a622fe4137ae71d648f91c8b7cf8a32cb4027R47):

A soft fork

There is no new chain.

Your own title is answering this, Taproot is an "update" coming to bitcoin not some shitcoin fork creating a copycoin to give you airdrop!

Not possible to know, since bitcoin is decentralized its forks always take place only after reaching majority support from the network and that can take time. But so far it has only been 16 days since the release of the new bitcoin core version that adds the code for Taproot activation and miners have started signalling. You can see the progress on a website like this: https://taproot.watch/

In many ways yes.
It is a soft fork, it is backward compatible, but it is a smaller upgrade than SegWit, It doesn't have the drama that SegWit had though, it is adding new witness version.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/taproot-coming-what-it-and-how-it-will-benefit-bitcoin

To be getting update about Taproot, you can set notification on this thread, Taproot proposal (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5140134.280). Most mining pools (https://taproot.watch/miners) are signalling for Taproot activation, this is an evidence that this can not result to hard fork, it will be a soft fork activation, which means there is no swap to a new chain, the normal bitcoin blockchain will also be used for tracking Taproot transactions. So far it does not lead to hardfork, holders will not get any forked coin because no new coin is created, nothing also like airdrop that will be reward. Nobody knows when Taproot will finally be fully activated but the progress (https://taproot.watch/) has been positive, but its activation will be this year.

Is it known or can it be roughly calculated by how much the Taproot upgrade will increase Bitcoin't transaction capacity? Are we talking substantial increase or just a minor improvement?

Before you will be able to get clearer view and able to know answers to your question, know that Taproot is about key aggregation, the more there are public keys used to open a multisig wallet, the more the transaction fee, schnorr signature will be able to aggregate the keys during transaction, this makes multisig transaction indistinguishable and making it to have low fee, irrespective of the numbers of keys used to open the multisig wallet that makes use of schnoor signature for signing, the transaction fee will be the same.

To understand more about this:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5140134.msg57011585#msg57011585

But if you think it will make transaction fee very low, it does not work that way, the activation will focus more reducing multisig transaction fee and making such transaction indistinguishable from single payment wallet.

Okay does this Taproot update affect bitcoin's decentralization in anyway that will bring a backlash from the btc community?

By its own, no.
However with the cooperation of MAST and schnorr signature which may be applied upon bitcoin in the future, it can improve the privacy of bitcoin thus improve its decntralization indirectly.

its soft.

so far no option of hard fork. and no option of a forced fork/contentious fork. (all good signs)

if it doesnt get its 90% over a 2 week period it just wont lock in/activate.
but has many 2 week oportunities over the next 3 months

so far based on the latest 1day % is at about ~85% acceptance
so i see its getting close to having met threshold (within inches so far)
so as long as pools dont pull out it could lock in within a month.
as it just needs a few more % and them to then hold it for 2 weeks+

if it does lock in, it then allows 3 further months to then upgrade software before it activates (giving users time to update)

i see no contention or malice practices by devs trying to force the issue

MAST and Schnorr relies Taproot being activated 1st on the btc network?

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Elon Musk wants Bitcoin to be a Cryptocurrency not a Crypto Asset (store of wealth) with his recent Lightning Network is needed tweet.

Does Taproot pave the way for lightning network?

Lightning Network only makes sense if everybody accepts it as payment from your local coffee shop to Amazon right? 

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

Elon Musk has a lot to read, he needs to tweet less and read more (this forum, maybe the technical area) before coming with wrong conclusions (again).

Bitcoin is what it is, he can't "want" anything and can't change anything anyway. The only changes are what the whole community agrees with, as you are seeing with taproot right now.


LN is for occasional fast transactions, this is not required for everything. You certainly don't need it to purchase a car online...

Former NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said that Bitcoin lacks privacy. He said without privacy bitcoin is useless and Privacy coins are better.

So TapRoot makes Bitcoin more private? If so then why Edward saying Taproot makes privacy worse ???

taproot can make LN settlement commitments cheaper.. IF the channel partners use the same subset of keys
from the same keyseed.
it works by using a RANGE instead of a point. meaning multiple keys or a mathematic average of those keys are within the range of the needed proof range

 its useful if one user wants to generate a thousand public addresses from a seed knowing that it only needs 1 signature to prove them all when spending all the funds received on those addresses

it doesnt work if people are generating keys from completely different random points unassociated with each other in any way. EG different seeds from different wallets

there might be 'some' LN utility for what is known as 'LN watchtowers/factory' services which is where there is a manager(third party) that sets up the channels on behalf of 2 users. whereby its always the watchtower/factory that is broadcasting the commitment.(lite wallet app ->manager server)
but in those cases. most of the time the factory is just aggregating balances offchain and resetting up new channels without needing to broadcast.

but in short.
it wont make LN any better. but does allow more oppertunity for managed channels(with pros and cons of that)
but mainly individuals can seed thousands of addresses and need only one signature
say for instance. exchanges/pools making batch payments

He definitely pretends to want that but his actions speak volumes. He already proved that he is yet another "investor" who doesn't care about bitcoin or the technology and just wants to make millions.

Not necessarily everyone. There are already a lot of cases that could be improved by a lot if they switched to LN. For example one of the biggest ones is the exchanges. Two others that come to mind are the payment processors and gambling sites. These are all creating a lot of on-chain spam that could be moved to LN which would not only leave more block space empty but also improves their centralized service and the user experience. Then you can easily make on-chain payment to Amazon and coffee shop after they migrate.

Snowden is a bit of celebrity really, not sure why we should take his opinion as being more interesting than anyone else's

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Taproot doesn't do much to improve Bitcoin privacy.

Bitcoin transactions can have optional parts in the contracts (even the simplest style of Bitcoin transaction where "Mr. A pays Mrs. B" is a basic contract, really)


With Taproot, the optional parts that don't get used aren't recorded in the blockchain. With current Bitcoin contracts, all the possible options are recorded onchain, which is a waste of space. Who cares about the parts of the contract that didn't happen?

So that's why people are saying Taproot improves privacy; it does, but it's more meaningful as a way of stopping the blockchain getting filled with useless parts of contracts.

Thanks for the insights. I was on the wrong path then as I thought it is going to decrease transaction fees. Are there any updates on the horizon that are specifically aimed at reducing transaction costs? That is still a pressing issue although the fees have been alright most of the time, but for even broader adoption they have to go down.

Are all the miners agree on this TapRoot Update?

BTC Taproot plan stumbles as miners fail to show support—who holds the power? (https://coingeek.com/btc-taproot-plan-stumbles-as-miners-fail-to-show-support-who-holds-the-power/)

You have to check your sources: https://taproot.watch/.

There is also a BIP proposed for mandatory activation in the event that miners don't signal support. There really isn't much politics that should involve the miners and favour them into hindering the activation.

The short answer is yes.
More than 95% of the mining pools are currently signalling support for Taproot activation. The problem is that they still haven't upgraded all their servers (each mining pool has multiple servers in different locations) with the change to signal for it so the total number of blocks signalling is a lot less.

Theres articles of Bitcoins being blacklisted because btc is non-fungible, for example bitcoins from the dark web silk road btc addresses have been blacklisted from exchanges and using mixers to clean/launder bitcoins become blacklisted too because exchanges know that they have been cleaned with a mixer.

What's your take on this?

• it's impossible to stop mixing "bad" coins and "good" coins together
• it's also impossible to stop someone swapping "good" coins for "bad", and then mixing afterwards (can be done fairly anonymously using the upcoming Coinswap wallet)
• people will always have some reason to do a "good"<->"bad" swap (can't buy things in gov controlled market with "bad" coins, can't buy things on the free market with "good" coins)

so it's just cat and mouse stupidity really.

Exactly. Having worked for the NSA does NOT automatically make someone an expert in cryptography or blockchain tech. More to the point, according to the Wiki on him (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden) he was a cyber security specialist mainly responsible for upgrades along with looking at how systems and their infra can be hacked. He was NOT a cryptographer of *any* sort.

To me his opinion on Taproot is meaningless.

MaraPool, the mining pool of controversial bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital Holdings, has signaled Taproot by adopting version 0.21.1 of the Bitcoin Core client software. Until recently, he did not dare to accept. https://ir.marathondh.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1244/marathon-signals-for-taproot

Nothing. The soft fork took place and Taproot was locked in, so nothing about it can change without another soft fork.

There are two different subjects here.
Taproot is definitely more important than a country accepting an arbitrary ETF but price-wise we can't really speculate that much about what affects the price in short term. Not to mention that these things always act as a catalyst to the ongoing rise not the driving force.

Yes. As I said the block height where Taproot activates can not change without another soft fork since it is now part of the consensus rules.
FYI it is block 709632 (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/ff65b696f3c6f6e17a790c6646249163ddb39eda/src/chainparams.cpp#L92)

Okay I keep hearing that this new taproot updates adds smart contract ability for bitcoin. Is this true?

Yeah I'm still trying to figure out the extent of this. I keep seeing people say this but I don't know to what extend smart contracts will work.

- I believe Discreet Log Contracts, which are part of the upgrade, allow oracles to operate on Bitcoin, which are necessary for DeFi.
- And the upgrade makes it so more complicated transactions only take up as much room as a normal transaction so for the first time it becomes affordable to write more complicated transactions (like a smart contract).
- And I think Taproot allows Bitcoin scripting to be upgraded more easily?? So it'll be easier to add more functionality to Bitcoin in the future.
- But the scripting language of Bitcoin is still very limited as of Taproot, so I'm not sure what people really mean when they say smart contracts will work on Bitcoin. Maybe very simple DeFi type stuff? Can Bitcoin scripting already do DeFi type stuff but it's just too expensive before Taproot? Or maybe they are more talking about Taproot improves LN and smart contract functionality could be added to Lightning??

Would love to see answers for this from someone who has a good understanding of the technicals of what Taproot provides.

Yeah Smart Contracts and Lightning Network will be a game changer to Bitcoin and this can destroy Ethereum 8) except Ethereum 2.0 will be POS while bitcoin is POW.

About Taproot Upgrade has been schedule on 16 Nov 2021 based on this news.
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/10/26/taproot-bitcoins-next-big-upgrade-might-already-be-priced-in/

After read this news, I higlighted that there is a curiousity and doubt about this upgrading. Is this really to have a good impact on Bitcoin price developments or will it even fade investor interest in Bitcoin.  Because technically what is offered is already owned by a network of competitors such as the Etherium network.  So this is like an update that already exists in its competitors.  What do you think?  is this really positive news for the market?

It depends on what you have in mind when you say "smart contracts".
The wikipedia definition says "A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol which is intended to automatically execute, control or document legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement."

Smart contracts have always been available in bitcoin (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contract). Genesis block reward went to a smart contract or whenever you someone bitcoin you are using a smart contract in its simplest form. You can also use more complex contracts for escrows, time lock contracts, fund raising, lottery, atomic swaps (cross chain), multi sig,... all of it designed to make sense for a "payment network".

Something like Ethereum on the other hand is mainly designed to let you create "tokens" out of thin air and then use those tokens for whatever you want. This is not something that can ever happen in Bitcoin because there is little to no utility for it.

As for PoS, the centralization in Ethereum is sacrificing the security of PoW so that they can earn money by only being the owners of the 72 million premined ETH. They also know that the uselessness of their shitcoin plus its unlimited supply and the dumping that they experienced the past 4 years will continue making PoW mining harder and harder which means in near future as ETH price dumps hard the hashrate drops with it and ETH becomes open to 51% attacks so they are trying to change the algorithm so that they can fully control the network by owning all the "stakes".

Do you mean Ethereum 2.0 POS is more centralized than the current Eth 1.0 POW?

But doesn't the mining get easier if Eth 1.0 POW hash rate drops attracting more miners to its network to secure it?

How many stakes Eth 2.0 will have? Who has the 72 million pre-mined Eth and you think this person will control all the stakes/nodes/validators for Eth 2.0 POS?

Coming back here, when will regular btc users and hodlers will see and benefit from this recent Taproot update?