Taproot
Also known as: Bitcoin Taproot Upgrade, MAST Bitcoin, Schnorr in Bitcoin
A Bitcoin protocol upgrade enhancing privacy, scalability, and smart contract flexibility via Schnorr signatures.
Taproot is a major Bitcoin protocol upgrade activated in 2021. It introduced Schnorr signatures and Merkelized Abstract Syntax Trees (MAST), allowing complex smart contracts to appear like standard transactions on-chain. This enhances privacy, efficiency, and scalability. Taproot enables batched transactions and simplifies multi-signature logic, reducing block space usage and costs. It is a backward-compatible soft fork and represents a foundational step toward more advanced scripting and interoperability in Bitcoin. Adoption of Taproot is ongoing, with wallet and protocol support gradually increasing.