Dear Readers,
Our world is constantly changing. Technology improves and people and companies develop new ways to interact with one another. Much of the change is positive and has led to a significant increase in wealth and major advances in the standard of living for people around the world. But change just for the sake of change doesn’t always lead to positive outcomes. It’s imperative that any major change be thoroughly vetted prior to implementation to ensure that participants have the greatest chance possible to weigh risks against benefits before putting their lives and livelihoods at risk.
Bitcoin clearly embodies that ethos. Bitcoin has seen several major upgrades over its lifetime, but those upgrades are often years apart and require a significant amount of back and forth between developers, miners, and users before being put into place. And why should it be any other way? After all, Bitcoin was designed to be digital money and currently fulfills that role for millions of people around the world. If your life savings are stored in Bitcoin, you’re going to want to make sure that proposed changes to the blockchain won’t result in the loss of your money.
Bitcoin’s last major upgrade occurred in 2017 and implemented SegWit, which had various benefits, perhaps the most well-known of which was a decrease in the amount of space needed per transaction within blocks of the blockchain. In the intervening years, the Bitcoin community has identified and agreed upon a brand-new set of improvements, collectively known as “Taproot”, that may very well be the most important upgrade to Bitcoin in its history.
