Speedy Trial has been merged into Bitcoin Core, offering a path toward the Taproot protocol upgrade if miners signal their overwhelming support.
- Author:
- Peter Chawaga[1]
- Publish date:
Speedy Trial has been merged into Bitcoin Core, offering a path toward the Taproot protocol upgrade if miners signal their overwhelming support.
According to a GitHub pull request[2], a BIP 9-based implementation of Speedy Trial has been merged with the code for Bitcoin Core, offering a potential path for activating the much-anticipated protocol upgrade Taproot.
As the Bitcoin Core dev community has debated the best way of implementing Taproot[3], which would add smart contract flexibility and privacy to Bitcoin, Speedy Trial[4] has emerged as a potential solution.
“Speedy Trial would give miners three months to signal support for the Taproot upgrade with their hash power,” as Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost explained on a recent episode[5] of Bitcoin Magazine’s “Van Wirdum Sjorsnado” podcast. “If a supermajority of miners signals support for the upgrade within these three months, Taproot will activate a couple of months later… If miners don’t signal support within three months, the upgrade will expire and a new upgrade path can be considered.”
There were two potential paths for getting Speedy Trial integrated into Bitcoin Core — through BIP 9 or through BIP 8, with some notable differences between the two methods[6]. Bitcoin Developer Luke Dashjr, who has been active in community discussions[7] regarding Taproot activation, noted his dissent around this BIP 9-based implementation of Speedy Trial on Twitter.
“Community came to consensus on BIP 8,” he wrote[8] in a reply to a tweet sharing the GitHub pull request. “These devs are
