A new version of Bitcoin Core 22.0 has been released, the main client for managing BTC network nodes, which natively supports Taproot.
The software was made available at bitcoincore.org and its main innovation over previous versions is full Taproot support.
Bitcoin Core 22.0 and Taproot?
The Taproot update was approved a few months ago, but for it to be fully usable, its new features had to be supported by nodes in the BTC network.
The previous version of BTC Core, 0.21.1, did not support the new features introduced with Taproot and required a manual update that many node administrators did not. Because BTC Core is used on more than 90% of BTC nodes, this has resulted in very limited upgrade support.
Now it’s just a matter of updating the software to the latest version to make the node fully compatible. Because most node managers regularly update the Core version of BTC, it can be safely assumed that the new version 22.0 will be widely deployed. In a few weeks, it is possible that most BTC nodes will natively support Taproot, so activating the new protocol will be feasible from November without major problems.
BTC Core 22.0: all new features
The new version also includes bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as updated translations and has been extensively tested on Linux, macOS 10.14+, Windows 7 and later. It should also work on most other Unix systems, but has not been extensively tested on them.
The list of changes is actually much more extensive than just adding the native Taproot feature, so it’s not a version update, but a new version (22.).
More than a hundred contributors participated in the development of this new version, working for approximately eight months under the supervision of BTC Core lead developer Wladimir van der Laan.
BTC Core 22.0 is the first version to offer full hardware wallet support through a user interface, allowing the use of a Hardware Wallet Interface (HWI) with Ledger, Vault, BitBox, KeepKey and Coldcard.
In addition, BTC Core 22.0 now offers connectivity via the Invisible Internet Project (I2P), as well as Tor, a decentralized, peer-to-peer, anonymous communications network.
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