Bitcoin Developers Divided on Specifics of Taproot Activation

Only, it's not ready to be deployed yet because Bitcoin developers have differing opinions on the best route to activation.

In a bid to expedite implementation discussions, Bitcoin Core contributor A.J. Towns recently surveyed 12 other developers who have been active in the implementation process to glean their thoughts on what activation should look like.

In an effort to put pressure on miners to upgrade, one proposal even suggested that node operators - those Bitcoin users who run Bitcoin's software and keep a copy of its ledger - reject transactions from the miners who hadn't updated to SegWit to expedite its adoption.

Even though Taproot is a non-controversial upgrade, the memory of Segwit is making developers cautious when evaluating this latest upgrade.

Two of the leading implementation proposals for Taproot rely on a mix of miner signaling and user activation.

BIP 8, introduced in 2017 by Bitcoin developers Luke Dashjr and Shoalinfry, would include a signaling period for miners; if enough miners don't activate to reach consensus on the upgrade, then a "Flag day" for activation would automatically upgrade Bitcoin nodes that have downloaded v0.21 of Bitcoin Core.These nodes would reject blocks and transactions from miners who do not support Taproot, so in theory, this method would incentivize miners to adopt the new ruleset lest they lose out on profits.

If too few miners adopt the upgrade, this would mean nodes could enforce the Taproot ruleset and only accept blocks from miners who also signaled for the upgrade.

So-called forced signaling through the flag day would have the benefit of making Taproot default on any Bitcoin Core node running v.21; in turn, these nodes would only accept block data from miners who have also signaled the update, so in theory this would encourage miners to upgrade lest they lose their business.

"Once the decision to activate has overwhelming support from developers and users, the longer the timeframe for activation the more things that can go wrong," former Bitcoin Core developer Eric Lombrozo said to Towns on Twitter.

Risks aside, if most developers and Bitcoiners think Taproot is a shoe-in for an upgrade, it shouldn't take four years to activate, especially since it has already been so-long in the making.