One of the biggest Bitcoin upgrades, Taproot, is starting its second signaling after the first one failed to materialize. In order for Taproot to get locked in the protocol upgrade for November, 90% of the blocks mined need to signal their readiness. If activated, this upgrade will bring increased privacy and cheaper transactions to Bitcoin blockchain along with allowing smart contracts to be deployed on it. This week, as we reported, Bitcoin mining difficulty hit an all-time high at 25.046 trillion after increasing by 21.5%. It was the largest percentage increase in about seven years. This massive spike in difficulty adjustment came following the Bitcoin mining hash rate hitting a new ATH as well within a month of its 25% drop after some miners went offline due to blackouts in China which had pushed the self-regulating mining difficulty to decrease as well. But now, the network is back at new highs as miners come back online. With the latest jump in difficulty adjustment, the previous countdown has ended, and the new Taproot signaling period has started that will last till the next adjustment that occurs every 2,016 blocks, roughly 14 days, to ensure the average interval between blocks remains at 10 minutes. While 80% of all Bitcoin hash rate is currently signaling for Taproot, less than 10% of blocks has signaled “green” during the last epoch, as per Taproot.watch. As of writing, 69.5% of mining pools have given their signal. The biggest Bitcoin mining pools Antpool, Poolin, and F2Pool have given their signal, while the major ones that have yet to do so include BTC.com, Binance Pool, OKEx Pool, 1THash, and BTC.Top.
