Despite network participants being slow to adopt Bitcoin’s latest upgrade, Taproot, Coinbase has added support for the new implementation today. Data varies across Dune dashboards, but one shows that Taproot transactions comprise 20% of all Bitcoin transactions, representing roughly 280,000 outputs. Meanwhile, other outputs reached 1.1 million. Another Dune dashboard shows that transactions starting from block 709632 when Taproot was activated, reach 13% currently, although a third dashboard marks it at 16%. Notably, Taproot transactions have never cumulatively reached 20% of all Bitcoin transactions on a monthly time frame, although they topped out at 19% between June and August. That said, they have passed the mark in individual months but have lost ground to Runes in recent months. Activated in November 2021, Taproot introduced several distinct features. First, it integrated Schnorr signatures, an upgrade to Bitcoin’s core cryptography. Taproot also built on the network’s previous upgrade, SegWit, to improve Bitcoin’s privacy, lower transaction fees, and improve smart contract functionality. Taproot was initially proposed by one of Bitcoin’s earliest core contributors, Gregory Maxwell, who released his notes in 2018. Gauging from Dune, it has been slow to be adopted by users. But some companies are beginning to add it to their tech stack, hoping to attract more modern Bitcoiners – and help boost adoption. Today, Coinbase wrote on X, “We're pleased to announce that Coinbase․com users can now send Bitcoin to Taproot addresses, creating access to more onchain destinations.” This puts them alongside Binance, OKX, and Kraken as the handful of companies that are up-to-date with Bitcoin’s latest updates.