Bitcoin Taproot Support Lags at 27% — Even Though Soft Fork Is Opt-in Supporters

[RSRS]

On June 12, the crypto community celebrated the fact that the Bitcoin network locked in Taproot support in order to activate the largest upgrade the protocol has seen in four years. 24 days later, Taproot support via Bitcoin nodes has only reached 27.55% and upgrade supporters are pleading with the community to update their nodes.

It’s Your Duty to Upgrade Nodes, Say Numerous Bitcoin Taproot Threads
Data stemming from the Twitter account called Taproot Signal shows that Taproot-supporting nodes only represent a touch over 27% of the known public node count. 72.45% have not updated their Bitcoin nodes to support the upcoming activation period in November. The upgrade, however, is a soft fork which means nodes don’t necessarily have to upgrade to remain within Bitcoin’s ruleset. Similarly, the soft fork Segregated Witness (Segwit) suffered from a lack of node adoption as well, when it was activated in 2017.

Bitcoin Node Taproot Support: 27.55%
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Node count:
Taproot: 16876
Non-enforcing: 43802
Light: 47
Unknown: 536 pic.twitter.com/bEWJVUoQBQ

— Taproot Signal (@taproot_signal) July 6, 2021

Segwit’s adoption rates didn’t kick in with much higher levels until March 2018. Segwit adoption levels tapped a high of 53% on February 23, 2021 and today levels have risen higher, reaching 71% according to Segwit usage data recorded on July 6. After Segwit was implemented many bitcoiners pleaded with node operators and major crypto businesses to adopt the soft fork. The same can be said about Taproot today, as crypto supporters are posting on forums telling node operators to update to a Taproot supporting node as soon as possible.

Over two weeks ago, one Redditor wrote: “Less than 25% of nodes enforce Taproot, UPDATE your nodes.” In the forum post, people argued over what would happen to a node that hasn’t upgraded to 0.21.1. One person said that if a node hadn’t upgraded to 0.21.1 after block 709,632, and “a miner were to produce a block that violates the Taproot rules” they may “see that block as valid while anyone who has upgraded sees it as invalid.” Another Redditor responding to the comment disagreed with the person’s assessment.

“As far as I understand there’s no way to produce a block that ‘violates the tap root rules though,’” the individual wrote. “It’s a soft fork. Old nodes and updated nodes both see pre-taproot and post-taproot blocks as valid. Old nodes will see taproot UXTOs as ‘anyone can spend’ outputs… but in reality, they aren’t. It works on all versions.”

Sourch