Taproot
Taproot (activated November 2021) is Bitcoin's biggest upgrade in years: smarter signatures (Schnorr) that make complex spending conditions look like ordin
Taproot (activated November 2021) is Bitcoin’s biggest upgrade in years: smarter signatures (Schnorr) that make complex spending conditions look like ordinary single-key payments — cheaper, more private, and enabling discreet smart-contract-like logic on Bitcoin.
Why it matters
Taproot quietly expanded what Bitcoin can do without changing what Bitcoin *is*: cooperative multisig and Lightning channels now blend into normal traffic, improving both privacy and efficiency. It also enabled Ordinals and new scripting experiments — proof that even the most conservative chain can evolve, slowly and carefully.