What is Taproot?
Let's find out Taproot meaning, definition in crypto, what is Taproot, and all other detailed facts.
Taproot is an upgrade to the Bitcoin blockchain that was activated in November 2021 at block 709,632. It was the first major upgrade to Bitcoin since Segregated Witnesses (SegWit) in 2017.
The Taproot soft fork aims to improve the scalability, privacy, and efficiency of crypto transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. The upgrade consists of three separate Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs):
- BIP340 (BIP – Schnorr);
- BIP341 (BIP – Taproot);
- BIP342 (BIP – Tapscript).
The Schnorr improvement proposal introduces the Schnorr Signatures scheme. The new signatures help optimize transaction authorization by making the process more secure and reducing the data load. Schnorr Signatures allow users to produce a single signature by taking multiple keys in a single Bitcoin transaction.
The Schnorr update enables the Taproot proposal, which introduces the “MAST” mechanism. MAST helps reduce the transaction data that smart contract sends to the blockchain. The Taproot proposal improves the transaction anonymity by obscuring some of the private information, such as whether the transactions used timelock or multi-signature mechanisms.
Instead, complex transactions will be logged as one transaction on-chain. Anyone attempting to read the data of a complex transaction would see it as peer-to-peer (P2P) and will be unable to view the scripts used.
The Tapscript improvement proposal was added to make way for any future improvements. It uses an upgraded transaction programming language and is expected to make future Bitcoin upgrades more efficient.