Episode 40: Taproot Activation part 5: Lock-in

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss the lock-in of the Taproot soft fork upgrade. As discussed in previous episodes, Taproot is a Bitcoin protocol upgrade that will make smart contracts more compact, private and flexible. Aaron and Sjors also discussed the Taproot upgrade process in prior episodes, including the Speedy Trial activation method adopted by Bitcoin Core. About a week ago, the Speedy Trial signaling threshold was reached, which means Taproot is locked in and will activate later this year. Aaron and Sjors go into further detail about what this means exactly, and what needs to happen before Taproot can ultimately be used on the Bitcoin network safely. Sjors also explains how upcoming Bitcoin Core releases will handle the Taproot upgrade, and what the Bitcoin Core wallet software will and will not enable, while also touching on potential use-cases enabled by the upgrade. Finally, Aaron and Sjors discuss the Speedy Trial activation process itself, and in particular the lessons learned by it, which could in turn inform future soft fork upgrades. They also briefly speculate which protocol upgrades may be next in line.