What is Taproot?

It switched on in November 2021, at block 709,632. A Taproot payment can keep its spending conditions hidden unless they're used, and a payment signed by many people can look like one signed by one.

Taproot addresses put a public keyPublic keyThe partner of a private key. It lets anyone check a signature without revealing the private key under current computing assumptions. straight on the blockchainBlockchainBitcoin's shared record of every payment since 2009, stored in blocks that each link to the one before — which is what makes it a chain., so they're among the outputs a powerful quantum computerQuantum computer (qubit)A computer that uses quantum physics to solve some problems far faster than ordinary ones. Its working parts are called qubits. could attack first. That's one reason for proposals like BIP-360.