Same same
Perhaps bitcoin should consider firing its public relations manager, because many of the articles written about the Taproot have gotten out of hand with wild inaccuracies.
Now, I'm not a coder, but I did have the pleasure of being on a Twitter Space call last night called "Is Taproot a Scam?" with some extremely intelligent Bitcoin personalities who managed to put things into perspective for me.
First off, we need to understand that the term "smart contract" refers to coding that is neither smart nor a contract. The term was first coined by Nick Szabo in 1994, before Bitcoin or Ethereum ever existed.
In their simplest form, smart contracts have always been a part of Bitcoin's protocol. So, whoever first started saying that Taproot would introduce these contracts to Bitcoin may have either been misinformed or they were simply exaggerating for the benefit of publicity.
In reality, as I now understand, the Taproot upgrade was rather incremental by design. The main benefits include a modest reduction in fees and load on the network per transaction and slightly improved privacy features and abilities to implement things like multisignature wallets.
Further, Taproot enhances the Bitcoin network's smart contracts, allowing for more intricate versions of these if-then agreements and helping conceal their details.
So after all, Bitcoin may not end up being the Ethereum killer some seem to be making it out to be.
Like SegWit, most of us will hopefully never feel the effects of this upgrade. For advanced coders, Taproot is nothing more than a schnorr (sorry, bit of programmer humor).
