Support for updating Taproot with mining pools reached 54%.

Bitcoin mining pools, representing more than 54% of the network’s current hashrate, have expressed support for updating the Taproоt scaling and privacy protocol recently added to Bitcoin Core.
Bitmain’s Antpool supported the protocol update on November 19, expressing its position in a message sent to Poolin. Thus, he joined five other pools as part of the Taproоt update activation initiative and increased the hashrate percentage in support of the update to 54%.
Poolin Vice President Alejandro De La Torre said he was “immensely happy” that most large mining pools responded affirmatively to the “concerted effort” to support Taproot. Binance Pool is the only one of the five largest pools that does not yet support Taproot.

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Updates to Taproot’s privacy and scaling and Schnorr’s signatures were added to Bitcoin Core last month. Taproot complements Schnorr’s signatures and offers a new version of transaction outputs and new options for defining BTC spending conditions for users.

In some cases, Taproot can even help restore access to lost coins. The signatures of Schnorr and Taproot are useful for users with a complex spending policy, who usually control large amounts, for example, cryptocurrency exchanges.

“The only doubt about the Taproot update is when and how it will be activated,” said Slush Pool engineer Daniel Frumkin. “After all, it should be a simple and minimally dramatized process.”

Frumkin contrasted the proposed update with acute disagreements in the industry caused by the 2017 S e g W I t 2 x proposal, which was also supported by many miners. The e n g i n e e r noted that he would be very surprised if miners opposed activating the Taproot update.

“In my opinion, the remaining large p o o l s will report support for the update in the coming weeks,” he said.