Quick Take Taproot is the first major upgrade (locked in for November) to Bitcoin since Segregated Witness in 2017 — improving the efficiency of complex transactions and enhancing privacy. Taproot uses a data structure called Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST) to only reveal the parts of scripts that are executed and Schnorr signatures for signature aggregation. Overall, the upgrade is obviously beneficial to Bitcoin, but it’s also worth noting that Taproot only provides an incremental benefit to the existing feature set.