Taproot activation (2021)
The Schnorr/Taproot soft fork, signalled through Speedy Trial in 2021, locked in at block 687,285 and activated at block 709,632 on 14 November 2021.
The wiki's angle: Taproot is the last soft fork Bitcoin activated, and it turned out to be the one whose most popular use nobody planned. Murch on S15 E50 rejected “Taproot caused ordinals” but admitted the inscription boom saddened him.[8][4]
The specifications
Taproot is defined in BIP-341 with Schnorr signatures in BIP-340 and Tapscript in BIP-342[1][2][3]. Bitcoin Takeover's fork history summarises it as introducing Schnorr signatures and an output type in which “a single key and a tree of scripts look identical on chain”[4].
Speedy Trial
The Bitcoin Core 0.21.1 release notes say activation used “a variation of BIP9 versionbits called Speedy Trial”, on bit 2, with lock-in if 90% of blocks in a 2,016-block period signalled before the timeout, and activation at block 709,632[5]. BIP-8, the height-based alternative with an optional forced lock-in, was debated but never used on mainnet, Bitcoin Takeover's history notes[4][6].
Lock-in and activation
Taproot locked in at block 687,285 on 12 June 2021, “within seven weeks” of signalling, and activated at block 709,632 with a header time of 05:15:27 UTC on 14 November 2021[4]. BIP-341 itself records: “The deployment did activate at height 709632 on Bitcoin mainnet”[1].
After activation
On S15 E50 Murch said Taproot had been discussed for about five years before it activated[7]. He called the claim that Taproot caused ordinals not tenable, while saying the use for inscriptions “saddens me greatly”[8]. BIP-110's 2026 restrictions on Taproot features are covered under Bitcoin Knots[9].
References
- primaryBIP-341 (Taproot: SegWit version 1 spending rules), Wuille, Nick, Towns [archived]
- primaryBIP-340 (Schnorr Signatures for secp256k1), Wuille, Nick, Ruffing [archived]
- primaryBIP-342 (Validation of Taproot Scripts), Wuille, Nick, Towns [archived]
- btkBitcoin: All the Hard Forks and Soft Forks (BTCTKVR: Forks!) [archived]
- primaryBitcoin Core 0.21.1 release notes (Taproot activation parameters) [archived]
- primaryBIP-8 (Version bits with lock-in by height), Shaolin Fry and Luke Dashjr [archived]
- episodeS15 E50: Murch on Taproot and inscriptions▶ listen at 53:56timestamp transcript-derived, pending a listen [archived]
- episodeS15 E50: Murch on “Taproot caused ordinals”▶ listen at 54:45timestamp transcript-derived, pending a listen [archived]
- btkBitcoin BLAKE2b: The Fork That Fired the Miners (BTCTKVR: Forks!) [archived]