Taproot creators didn’t foresee its ‘trolling value’ — Bitcoin dev

Bitcoin developers behind the Taproot upgrade didn’t account for the “social attack surface” that enabled Ordinals, BRC-20s, and other nonfinancial transactions to flood the network with spam, says a Bitcoin developer.

“What they ignore is that Taproot had significant trolling value as the upgrade that Bitcoiners were placing their hopes in,” Bitcoin Core developer Jimmy Song said in an X video on Sunday, adding:

“The increase in the social attack surface of this upgrade wasn’t accounted for at all, let alone considered.”

Song — who referred to Ordinals as a “fiat scam” last year — claimed that Taproot has failed to live up to the hype because it didn’t deliver on the privacy and security features promised.

He pointed to Schnorr signatures and Script Paths Spend features, which, together, were touted as a more efficient alternative to multisig, in some cases allowing three of five friends or family members to assist with recovering a Bitcoin key. However, it ended up being even more complicated as it required more rounds of signatures than traditional multisig, he said.

“Bad user experience basically made it a non-starter,” Song added. Taproot was activated by Jonas Nick, Tim Ruffing, A.J. Townes and a few other Bitcoin Core devs in November 2021, building on the work of Gregory Maxwell, who introduced the concept in January 2018.

#vlog 27

Was Taproot A Wise Decision? pic.twitter.com/sUjtf8JA2z

— Jimmy Song (송재준) (@jimmysong) September 13, 2025

Song’s comments come amid a growing divide between Bitcoiners over which transactions should be validated or not validated on the network.

Adam Back, Dennis Porter and Luke Dashjr are among the Bitcoiners who — like Song — prefer Bitcoin to focus on fixing money — and thus serve solely as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, as Satoshi Nakamoto intended it to be used.

Others, such as Bitcoin Ordinals leader “Leonidas,” have embraced the Taproot upgrade, using it to create Ordinals and Runes applications, among other things. Bitcoiners in this camp argue that Bitcoin shouldn’t censor any transaction.

Ordinals, Runes ignited the Bitcoin Core vs Bitcoin Knots war

In June, more than 30 Bitcoin Core developers agreed to remove the 80-byte limit on the OP_RETURN function, allowing for significantly more pictures, audio, videos and documents to be stored onchain.

But fears that Bitcoin Core — the leading Bitcoin software node operator — could U-turn on the update have sparked a shift to use Bitcoin Knots instead.

The number of Bitcoin Knots nodes has increased from 67 nodes in March 2024 to over 7,112 today, representing nearly 28% of the network.

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Earlier this month, Leonidas said his Ordinals community may even consider forking Bitcoin Core if developers reversed the upcoming update and tried censoring Ordinals, Runes and other non-financial transactions on the network.

Song hasn’t given up on Taproot upgrade yet

While Taproot-enabled Bitcoin applications haven’t met Song’s expectations thus far, he hasn’t written it off as a potential benefit to Bitcoin.

“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.”

Ordinals, Runes have strengthened Bitcoin security, Leonidas argues

Meanwhile, Leonidas has argued that Ordinals and Runes have contributed over $500 million in transaction fees to strengthen Bitcoin’s security — something which has become an increasing concern as the network’s mining block subsidy continues to halve every four or so years.

However, reliance on these fees has been shaky, with the daily fee tallying from Ordinals inscription fees ranging from $3,060 to $537,400 in 2025, Dune Analytics data shows.

The $537,400 is hardly one-twentieth of the record $9.99 million that Bitcoin miners raked in from Ordinals on Dec. 16, 2023.

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