I know I mentioned it last week, but I want to keep beating this drum because the possibilities that activating Schnorr and Taproot open up are massive. On top of this, the kleptocrats are beginning to beat their drums louder as they try to paint bitcoin usage into a corner preserved for criminals. In my humble opinion, this should be causing a sense of urgency to bring these tools to market. Especially when one considers the trajectory of SegWit adoption after it was activated in 2017.
@LukeDashjr you said there was talks of scheduling an IRC chat to debate activation methods for core. Has this been planned yet?
— ₿enthecarman 🥕 (@benthecarman) January 20, 2021
We can at least have a discussion...
— Luke Dashjr (@LukeDashjr) January 20, 2021
But more importantly, there's still code review work to be done.
There are some killer features that these tools enable that will improve privacy, efficiency, and robustness at the protocol level as well as on second layers like the Lightning Network. The ability to open up channels with Point Time Locked Contracts (PTLCs) on the Lightning Network utilizing Schnorr + Taproot, and then using those PTLCs to route payments via Rendezvous Routing would be a major boon to privacy for individual users of the LN. Your Uncle Marty has been thinking about this particular use case for the last sixteen hours.
This particular use case would also reduce the amount of data needed to be included in these types of transactions, which reduces fees for users opening and closing channels. This is just one use case that my feeble little brain could come up with right now. The benefits stretch well beyond this.
As you can see from the thread above, the ball seems to be moving a bit at least. Core devs like Luke Dashjr feel there is more review work to be done. Let's try to make sure that the necessary review is happening so that the people can get this stuff in their hands. Core v0.21.0 merged the Taproot code into the software and people can begin tinkering with it on Signet (one of Bitcoin's testnets). I'd like to see more tinkering as well to get more people excited.
Let's do this, freaks.
Final thought...
The Sopranos is (are?) wild.
