Bitcoin upgrades its network with Taproot soft fork, price above $64k

The largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has finally upgraded its network with the Taproot soft fork after miners and mining pools gave 90% lock-in consensus between blocks 709,488 and 709,632. The recent integration marks the first significant upgrade for BTC since the launch of the Lightning Network and Segregated Witness (SegWit), BTC’s leading layer-two solution, in August 2017.

The goal of the Taproot upgrade is to improve the privacy system and scripting capabilities of the BTC network. The soft fork has brought the concept of the Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST) to achieve the aim. Hampus Sjöberg, a famous Bitcoin developer, handles a Taproot- dedicated website which says:

“[MAST] can help make smart contracts more efficient and private by only revealing the relevant parts of the contract when spending.”

Taproot has huge potential

He also pointed out that Taproot integration is an indication that BTC is able to perform network upgrades which are necessary for its longevity. He believes that the recent integration is the greatest win.

Sjöberg is a developer of a BTC Lightning wallet, Blixt Wallet, and is known for his insightful views on BTC development. He added that he believes that the Taproot upgrade will also allow developers to explore off-chain capabilities.

Crypto investors’ hub Twitter has been flooded with the celebration after the BTC promotion. The BTC developer also believes that if the Lightning implementation adopts Taproot, MAST has the potential to even improve the older Lightning Network’s privacy.

A few weeks ago, various Lightning Network node implementations’ developers had a meeting in Switzerland at LN Summit 2021, where they discussed the possible upgrade paths.

The speedy trial, a soft fork development method, should take credit for Taproot’s successful activation. The method includes 90% of the miners signaling the upgrade’s deployment. Sjöberg explains that this method works in periods of 2016 blocks, which means that within a 2016 block period, 1815 blocks have to indicate the readiness of the upgrade.

As TheCoinRise reported, after the disapproval of VanEck’s BTC ETF, the king coin fell below $63,000. But with the recent upgrade, the coin is holding strongly above the support zone with the current price of $64,000.