Holding 13% of Bitcoin’s hashrate, the mining pool Poolin unveiled a portal dedicated to the Taproot upgrade. It will serve as a forum among pools to devise a unified approach to activating the technology.
Poolin Launches Initiative To Activate Taproot, Encouraging Other Mining Pools To Join https://t.co/wUuzYG0MFz via @bitcoinmagazine @bit_kevin @bitentrepreneur @AaronvanW
— Poolin (@officialpoolin) November 16, 2020
Taproot, along with the Tapscript technology and Schnorr signatures, is included in the upcoming Bitcoin Core 0.21.0 release.
If the Schnorr signature scheme offers a new type of signatures, Taproot expands their functionality — by combining cryptographic tricks, users can hide details of their financial activity behind outwardly ordinary Bitcoin transactions.
Taproot is close, or the next step in Bitcoin’s evolution
Poolin became the first pool to announce support for the forthcoming upgrade, tagging all blocks it mines with the corresponding label.
Bitcoin Core 0.21.0 will include the Taproot code but will not contain logic for its activation. It is expected that Taproot activation, in the form of a soft fork or backward-compatible update, will proceed smoothly if the majority of miners support it.
Previous soft forks were activated via a method called VersionBits (BIP9), which required 95% of miners signaling support for the protocol.
After SegWit activation in 2017, some developers prefer BIP8. It opens up the possibility of forced activation after a fixed period.
Miners also discuss smaller changes to the update mechanism. Some argue that the approval threshold should be lowered from 95%. Debates are ongoing about the activation window if BIP8 is chosen.
Some proposals combine these ideas. The update could include a dedicated software fork to carry out this work. An example is BIP148, which acted as a catalyst for the SegWit activation in 2017.
CEO Poolin Kevin Pan noted that he prefers Taproot activation via BIP9. However, he did not rule out the possibility of BIP8 with forced activation.
“Unlike SegWit, Taproot does not provoke such fierce debates, and BIP9 was successfully used even before SegWit. We prefer old-fashioned BIP9. But the community could also implement a user-activated soft fork BIP8,” he explained.
Pan believes that if BIP8 is chosen, a one-year period would be sufficient to prepare for its activation. He added that most developers will find consensus and will make “the right decision.”
As previously reported, Blockstream introduced a new multisignature scheme in light of the forthcoming Taproot activation.
ForkLog wrote that Taproot opens potential for creating new payment scenarios.
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