Taproot
A Bitcoin upgrade that improved transaction privacy, flexibility, and efficiency for complex spending conditions.
Taproot is a Bitcoin protocol upgrade that made complex transactions (such as multi-signature spending conditions) appear similar to simple ones on-chain, improving privacy, and made such transactions more efficient.
It also introduced a more flexible scripting system, giving developers more efficient tools for building advanced Bitcoin-based applications. Taproot's two core technical components are Schnorr signatures, which let multiple signatures be combined into one before being recorded on-chain, and MAST (Merkelized Alternative Script Trees), which lets a complex spending condition reveal only the specific branch actually used rather than every possible condition. Taproot was activated through a soft fork (see Kaavon's "Soft Fork" glossary definition) in November 2021.
Examples
- A Taproot transaction using a complex spending condition can look similar on-chain to a simple transfer.
- Taproot adoption has grown gradually since its activation on the Bitcoin network.