Bitcoin developers and community members have decided on a timeline for the Taproot update rollout. Preparations for code activation will begin in May via the Speedy Trial, and the update itself will be activated in November.
According to notes from the IRC meeting, the developers plan to prepare the Taproot code for users to activate in the Bitcoin Core client through the Speedy Trial mechanism in May this year. If the Speedy Trial is successful, the update will be activated online in November.
“We have reached agreement that we are aiming for a code release on May 1 and a support signaling period in a week,” Bitcoin developer Jeremy Rubin wrote in the meeting notes. “If successful, the update could be activated around November 15th.”
In early March, Bitcoin developers proposed a new way to activate Taproot and Schnorr signatures. The Speedy Trial will give BTC miners three months to decide whether to support the upgrade. If 90% of miners express support for the update, then the Speedy Trial will be successful and the update will be committed for activation three months after the start of voting. In another three months, Taproot will be activated on the Bitcoin mainnet.
If voting starts on May 7 and miners show sufficient support, then Taproot will be fixed for deployment on August 7 and will be activated on November 15. The later the Expression of Support begins, the later the activation will take place. The new code in BIP8 will set the parameters for activating Taproot, which will determine when to commit an update based on the block height.
Taproot and Schnorr Signatures are the biggest Bitcoin updates since SegWit. In February, Bitcoin developers announced that updates could start working on the blockchain this July. For a long time, Bitcoin developers could not decide on a mechanism for activating updates.
One option was to deploy through a User Activated Soft Fork (UASF). This mechanism gives node operators the ability to force Taproot and reject blocks from miners who have not supported the upgrade. Miners are not opposed to Taproot, however, and in 2017 the UASF proposal lacked community support.
However, Luke Dashjr and other developers continue to work on UASF in case activation via Speedy Trial fails. However, this scenario is unlikely, given the almost complete support for the update by Bitcoin miners.
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