Taproot activation

Taproot (BIPs 340/341/342 — Schnorr signatures, SegWit v1 spending rules, and Tapscript) activated at block 709,632 on November 14, 2021. Activation used the "Speedy Trial" mechanism: miners had roughly three months to reach 90% signaling within a single 2016-block difficulty period; the threshold was crossed in June 2021 (lock-in at block 687,285's period), fixing activation for block 709,632. It was a soft fork.

Nuance: Taproot's practical effects — key aggregation, script-path privacy, cheaper multisig-like spends — arrive only as wallets adopt it; activation made the rules available, not universal. Its script structure also turned out to enable inscriptions (see ordinals-inscriptions), an unanticipated use that fuels ongoing policy debate.

Common misstatements:

• "Taproot activated in 2021 by developer decision." — Rules shipped in Bitcoin Core 0.21.1/21.x; activation required the miner-signaling process and node enforcement.
• "Taproot made Bitcoin transactions private." — It improves the uniformity of certain spends (script paths can look like single-key spends); it is not confidentiality of amounts or parties.
• Wrong date/height pairings (e.g., "block 709,632 in December"). — 709,632 on November 14, 2021.