The much-awaited upgrade of the Bitcoin network, Taproot went live on Nov. 14. It's meant to improve the protocol's privacy and security.
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Taproot is the first major update of the BTC code till 2017, when the Segregated Witness (SegWit) was introduced, separating transaction signatures and boosting the block size limit.
The proposal of Taproot was put forward in 2018 by cryptographic systems developer Gregory Maxwell and met with wide support.
In June 2021, the predominant majority of BTC miners reached a consensus to follow the changes. Taproot is considered to be a decisive point in Bitcoin's history. Including 3 improvement proposals, it is supposed to make future upgrades easier, reduce the cost and size of smart contracts, and deliver operations with higher privacy.
Increased efficiency of smart contracts will unlock the network's potential to be a more active player in the sector of DeFi.
Currently, the largest cryptocurrency trades at around $66.000. In the last 24 hours, the Bitcoin price went up by 3%. The coin’s market dominance index is 43.26%.