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Bitcoin miners have reached the 90% approval threshold for Taproot.

During the current epoch the 90% mark for activating Taproot will most likely not be reached, but only because this epoch began on May 13, 2021. 

In fact, for several hours now, the threshold seems to have been reached. 

However, it is not enough, because what matters is the percentage of blocks signalling Taproot compared to the total number of blocks in an entire epoch. Bitcoin’s epochs of difficulty last about two weeks, so it is unlikely that the threshold will be reached as early as the end of the current epoch, which is likely to end on 28 May. 

However, if today’s pace of reporting is maintained, the next epoch starting on 28 May should reach the 90% threshold, which would definitively confirm the activation of the update in November this year.

Although during the last epoch the percentage of blocks signalling Taproot was well below the threshold, the current epoch has already started with a percentage above 50%, but not yet enough to reach the threshold. 

However, with only four days left before the start of the new epoch, it now seems that the goal is within reach during the next one. 

Bitcoin mining, the path to Taproot

The turning point is probably the activation of Taproot’s signalling by the Binance pool. 

The company had previously asked its followers whether they thought they should signal Taproot, and the corresponding poll ended with an overwhelming majority of yes (78.2%). 

In addition to Binance Pool, the two largest Bitcoin mining pools, AntPool and F2Pool, were among the first to support the update, while SlushPool was the first pool to mine a block containing the Taproot signal.

Now all 10 major pools are signalling Taproot.

Taproot will mark a major update to the Bitcoin protocol, although a hard fork will not be required. It will therefore be a soft fork with no chain splitting. It will likely be the biggest improvement to the Bitcoin protocol in the last four years, following the one in 2017 that introduced SegWit

 

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