● Taproot review: starting the first week of November, several Bitcoin contributors will be hosting a series of weekly meetings to help guide people through review of the proposed bip-schnorr, bip-taproot, and bip-tapscript changes. All developers, academics, and anyone else with technical experience are welcome. The expected commitment is four hours a week for seven weeks, with one hour each week being a group meeting and the other three hours being your own independent review of the proposals. In addition to review, developers will be encouraged to optionally implement a proof-of-concept that either shows how schnorr or taproot can be integrated into existing software or that demonstrates the new or improved features the proposals make possible. This will help implementers to identify flaws or sub-optimal requirements in the current proposals that might be missed by people who only read the documentation.

The ultimate goal of the review is to allow participants to gain enough technical familiarity with the proposals to be able to either vocally support the proposals, advocate for changes to the proposals, or clearly explain why the proposals shouldn’t be adopted into the Bitcoin consensus rules. Adding new consensus rules to Bitcoin is something that should be done carefully—because it can’t be undone safely for as long as anyone’s bitcoins depend on those rules—so it’s in every user’s interest that a large number of technical reviewers examine the proposals for possible flaws before they are implemented and before users are asked to consider upgrading their full nodes to enforce the new rules. Whether through this organized review or in some other way, Optech strongly encourages all technically skilled Bitcoin users to dedicate time to reviewing the taproot set of proposals.

Anyone wanting to participate should RSVP soon so that the organizers can estimate the total number of participants and start forming study groups. To register or learn more, please see the Taproot Review repository.