Recent Improvements on the Bitcoin Network

Bitcoin has proven to be the most successful and profitable innovation ever. This virtual money technology has evolved significantly since its launch in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. When this digital money was first introduced to the public by Nakamoto, some people assumed it was a scam and was not here to stay. However, this digital money has proven people wrong. Some of these digital asset adopters are millionaires and even billionaires. The number of people who purchase and mine this electronic currency has grown significantly. Therefore, this electronic money network is continuously being developed by its users as the Bitcoin community aims to improve privacy and scalability. Therefore, you could transact Bitcoin via Bitcoin Prime and enjoy the efficiency and privacy of Bitcoin.

This electronic money original client, the Bitcoin core, is on version 23.0, meaning that many changes have happened behind the scenes. Over the past years since this virtual currency was first launched in 2009 by its original creator, there have been many Bitcoin improvement proposals presented to this virtual money community proposing various ways to improve the network efficiency. Some of these improvement proposals have been approved by the network, while the same network has rejected some. Moreover, these digital money core developers participate in the development process of this virtual currency. Below is a list of the recent improvements in this digital money network. 

The Lightning Network

The lightning network is a layer two payment protocol built on this electronic currency blockchain. Researchers Thaddeus Dryja and Joseph Poon proposed this lighting network first in 2005. Their paper’s basis was purely its original creators, Satoshi’s ideas on payment channels, and his forum discussions about them. After the proposal in 2005, Thaddeus and Joseph built Lightning Labs, a company that would purely focus on developing the Lightning Network. However, Thaddeus and Pooh released the beta version of the Lightning network in 2018. 

Additionally, the Lightning network uses intelligent contract functionality, enabling its users to make instant small Bitcoin transactions. These electronic money payments take place inside payment channels, allowing two parties to transact freely. Lightning Network was also to help solve the scalability issue, offering meager transaction fees as transacting and settling this digital currency occurs off-chain. This lightning Network helps solve the problem of scalability by handling billions of transactions per second. 

On the other hand, the Lightning Network is not as perfect as it sounds, as it has issues that players have continuously solved. Among the solutions in progress are route building and trampoline onion routing. 

Taproot

Taproot began in 2021 via a soft fork. Hence, it is this digital asset upgrade. This taproot enhances privacy and ensures transactions are less costly as it reduces fees and improves intelligent contract functionality. Because of the taproot upgrade’s advantages make Bitcoin transactions cheaper, more efficient, and more private. Gregory Maxwell first introduced the Taproot upgrade in 2018. 

Because of this taproot upgrade, transactions requiring several parties to sign off for them to go through can come together, ensuring easier verification on the blockchain. This first verification helps to boost the time it takes to validate complex multi-sig transactions, which were very slow before the taproot upgrade. 

Moreover, the taproot upgrade also benefits lightning users by easing network congestion on this digital money base layer. Lightning Network transactions’ verification happens on the Bitcoin blockchain, which could cause congestion. Also, taproot offers privacy to these digital money users as it disguises multi-sig transactions.

The Bottom Line

These latest Bitcoin improvements aim to expand the potential of this virtual currency and hence are essential. Also, besides the two improvements listed above, others include FediMint, the Liquid Network, and SegWit.