Protocol Upgrades
How Bitcoin evolved — SegWit, Taproot, and Lightning
Bitcoin changes slowly and deliberately. Each major upgrade required years of research, debate, and coordination. These three protocols define modern Bitcoin: SegWit fixed the base layer, Taproot improved privacy and scripting, and Lightning scaled payments off-chain.
Segregated Witness
L1BIP 141 · BIP 143
Bitcoin's most contentious soft fork — fixed malleability, increased capacity, and unlocked Lightning.
August 24, 2017
Taproot
L1BIP 340 · BIP 341 · BIP 342
Schnorr signatures and Merkelized scripts — Bitcoin's smoothest major upgrade.
November 14, 2021
Lightning Network
L2Layer 2 Payment Channels
Instant, low-fee Bitcoin payments via off-chain payment channels.
January 19, 2018
How They Connect
SegWit fixed transaction malleability and increased block capacity — prerequisites for everything that followed.
Lightning builds on SegWit to move payments off-chain into bidirectional channels, settling net balances on-chain.
Taproot makes Lightning channel operations and complex scripts cheaper and more private on-chain.