Bitcoin Taproot upgrade quietly goes live. Covered: Bitcoin Taproot: Schnorr and Smart Contracts Scalability And What It Means For DApps Bitcoin Taproot: Schnorr and Smart Contracts irrelevant short term longer term: extremely bullish! — Dylan LeClair ?? (@DylanLeClair_) November 13, 2021 The long-awaited Bitcoin Taproot upgrade is officially here going live overnight. It’s the first […] The post Breaking: Bitcoin Taproot Upgrade Officially Activated appeared first on CryptosRus.

Breaking: Bitcoin Taproot Upgrade Officially Activated

Bitcoin Taproot upgrade quietly goes live.

Covered:

  • Bitcoin Taproot: Schnorr and Smart Contracts
  • Scalability And What It Means For DApps

Bitcoin Taproot: Schnorr and Smart Contracts

The long-awaited Bitcoin Taproot upgrade is officially here going live overnight. It’s the first major upgrade in four years to the world’s largest cryptocurrency. The update brings Schnorr signatures and improved smart contract functionality to Bitcoin.

Recommended: Why the Taproot Upgrade is so Important to Bitcoin

Schnorr signatures will bring more privacy features to the chain. Previously, Bitcoin was using Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for its signatures. Schnorr is similar to ECDSA, as it uses Elliptic Curve Cryptography, however, it offers advantages in efficiency, storage, and privacy.

Interestingly, some have wondered why Schnorr signatures weren’t implemented in the first place, considering Schnorr predates ECDSA. Binance Academy believes it may have been because Schnorr signatures were still patented in 2008 when the Satoshi white paper first arrived.

Bitcoin Scalability And What It Means For DApps

Although Bitcoin already had smart contracts, the new upgrade brings the world’s first cryptocurrency a more scalable version of them. The Bitcoin protocol, for example, has hosted Pepe NFTs for years. However, Taproot now makes the process smaller and cheaper, all thanks to the improved compression from the addition of Mast scripts.

Thanks to the improved scalability, the race to build Dapps on the Bitcoin network is reportedly underway. Some have speculated already about a Jack Dorsey announcement already regarding a Bitcoin DeFi protocol.

Bitcoin obviously has its incredibly large and devoted following, but it also has its detractors. It’s sometimes referred to as Boomercoin by the younger crowd. It remains to be seen how the Bitcoin community will choose to build off these upgrades, and if those choices will attract the younger crowd to the world’s oldest cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin is trading flat (64k USD range) on the news of the Taproot upgrade.

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