Thread by @AaronvanW

Don't understand what Taproot lock-in means and at this point you're too afraid to ask?

Here's a thread with all my Taproot and Taproot activation articles so far 👇

For years now, Bitcoin developers have been wanting to implement Schnorr signatures on the Bitcoin protocol.

bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/the-po…

Among other things, Schnorr signatures would enable a new type of smart contracts, sometimes referred to as Scriptless Scripts.

bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/scri…

Meanwhile, Bitcoin developers were also thinking about a trick called MAST (Merkelized Abstract Syntax Trees), which would make smart contracts on Bitcoin more compact.

bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/the-…

Bitcoin Core contributor Gregory Maxwell then figured out how to combine Schnorr and MAST in a clever way to not only make smart contracts more compact, but in many cases also indistinguishable from regular transactions, benefitting privacy: Taproot.

bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/tapr…

After years of development, the Taproot code was ready to be activated. This marked the start of a new discussion: how should the upgrade be deployed on the Bitcoin network as safely as possible?

bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/bip-…

Interestingly, some miners also took the initiative to get Taproot in the Bitcoin protocol, with @officialpoolin's @bitentrepreneur collecting positive feedback from a range of mining pools on taprootactivation.com.

bitcoinmagazine.com/business/pooli…

Still, there were roughly to "camps" in the Bitcoin activation debate, that for a while seemed unable to reach consensus on the best method: LOT=false or LOT=true.

bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/lott…

This apparent deadlock was eventually broken when Bitcoin Core contributor Russell O'Connor proposed an activation method called Speedy Trial.

bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/ther…

Today, Bitcoin miners locked in Taproot using miner signaling, as defined in Speedy Trial.

Bitcoin is upgrading. Congrats everyone!

bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/tapr…

Finally, as a neat example of something new that could soon benefit from the Taproot upgrade, several Bitcoin developers have been speculating about a concept known as Payment Pools: bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/buildi…