Bitcoin Lightning Network Developer Unveils Game-Changing Taproot Upgrade

Key Points:

• Lightning Labs announces Taproot Assets v0.2 to provide a more efficient method for minting assets on the Bitcoin blockchain and solve scaling problems.
• The release enables the minting or moving of an unbounded number of assets in a single on-chain transaction and leverages existing network effects.
• As adoption grows, it should alleviate the blockchain congestion problems and leave space to onboard the masses to Bitcoin.

Lightning Labs, a Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) developer, has recently announced an upgrade to their Taproot Assets Protocol to provide a more efficient method of minting assets on the blockchain. The upgrade, known as Taproot Assets v0.2, follows the recent mayhem that occurred on the BRC-20 network.

The release of Taproot Assets v0.2 offers the core set of features for developers to issue, send, receive, and discover assets on the Bitcoin blockchain. The protocol was also designed to operate maximally off-chain to avoid the blockchain congestion that occurred last week.

The developers acknowledged that the current form of the BTC network is not scalable. They stated, “While the excitement around building on Bitcoin is encouraging, the fee market’s response has indicated that these protocols are not designed for scale.” However, the latest release enables the minting or moving of an unbounded number of assets in a single on-chain transaction.

Users will soon be able to integrate their assets into the Lightning Network for faster and cheaper transactions. This upgrade leverages existing network effects and negates the need to “bootstrap a new ecosystem from scratch.” The announcement also concluded that, as adoption grows, it should alleviate the blockchain congestion problems.

On May 8th, the Bitcoin network experienced a spike in transactions and fees to multi-year highs. Average daily transactions surged to over 600,000 and average transaction fees peaked at over $30. The BRC-20 memecoin mining and ordinal inscription craze overloaded the network, preventing regular users from getting their transactions through as the mempool backlog increased.

Currently, there are 245,505 unconfirmed transactions, according to Mempool Space. However, block sizes and times have returned to more acceptable levels. BitInfoCharts data shows average daily transactions are still high at over 500,000, and average transaction fees are around $5, which is still double what they were in April.

The BRC-20 token market capitalization exceeded $1 billion last week. However, it has dropped back to $464 million at the moment, according to CoinGecko. Memecoins such as frog-themed PEPE comprised a large portion of that as degen speculators rode the PEPE pump and dump. In conclusion, the upgrade to Taproot Assets v0.2 provides a promising solution to address current scaling problems on the Bitcoin network.

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