The Taproot upgrade under fire: developer Jimmy Song argues it failed to deliver on promises of privacy and security.
The developers responsible for the Taproot upgrade did not take into account the “social attack surface” that allowed Ordinals, BRC-20 and other non-financial transactions to flood the network with spam. This is the criticism leveled by Bitcoin Core developer Jimmy Song.
In a video posted on X, Song stated:
“What they ignore is that Taproot had significant trolling value as the upgrade that Bitcoiners were placing their hopes in.”
The developer also added that the expansion of the social attack surface brought by this upgrade was neither considered nor properly addressed.
Broken promises on privacy and security
Song, who in the past had called Ordinals a “fiat scam,” argues that Taproot failed to live up to expectations because it did not deliver on its promised privacy and security features.
The developer pointed to Schnorr signatures and Script Paths Spend functionalities which, together, were promoted as a more efficient alternative to multisig. However, according to Song, the result turned out to be even more complicated, requiring more rounds of signatures than traditional multisig.
“Bad user experience basically made it a non-starter,” Song added. The Taproot upgrade was activated by Jonas Nick, Tim Ruffing, A.J. Townes and other Bitcoin Core developers in November 2021, based on Gregory Maxwell’s work, who had introduced the concept in January 2018.
A rift between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots
Song’s remarks come at a time of growing division among Bitcoiners over which transactions should or should not be validated on the network.
Adam Back, Dennis Porter and Luke Dashjr are among the Bitcoiners who, like Song, prefer Bitcoin to focus on solving monetary problems, serving exclusively as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, as Satoshi Nakamoto originally intended. Others, such as Ordinals leader Leonidas, embraced Taproot, using it to create Ordinals and Runes applications, among other things. Bitcoiners in this camp argue that the protocol should not censor any transaction.
Last June, more than 30 Bitcoin Core developers agreed to remove the 80-byte limit on the OP_RETURN function, allowing more images, audio, video and documents to be stored on-chain.
That decision triggered a shift toward the use of Bitcoin Knots, the alternative implementation created by Luke Dashjr. The number of Bitcoin Knots nodes increased from 67 in March 2024 to over 7,000 today, accounting for nearly 28% of the network, according to Coin Dance data.
Earlier this month, Leonidas stated that his Ordinals community might consider forking Bitcoin Core if developers rolled back the upcoming upgrade and attempted to censor Ordinals, Runes and other non-financial transactions on the network.
Despite Taproot-enabled applications not living up to Song’s expectations so far, the developer remarked:
“Taproot can, of course, redeem itself, maybe Ark ultimately decentralizes mining, maybe BitVM creates way more Bitcoin demand. But so far, Taproot has not lived up to the cost users paid to get it.”
Meanwhile, Leonidas argued that Ordinals and Runes have contributed over $500 million in transaction fees to strengthen Bitcoin’s security. However, reliance on these fees has been unstable, with daily totals from Ordinals inscriptions ranging from $3,060 to $537,400 in 2025, according to Dune Analytics. The $537,400 figure is just one-twentieth of the record $9.99 million miners collected from Ordinals on December 16, 2023.
