Bitcoin’s latest upgrade, which includes so-called Schnorr signatures that allow more complex bitcoin transactions to look like just any other transaction, is the first significant change to the protocol since the introduction of Segregated Witness in 2017. SegWit, designed to help bitcoin scale, was implemented at the height of the so-called block size wars that saw the bitcoin community riven in two, with one side breaking away to create a payments-focused fork of bitcoin, known as bitcoin cash.
Since 2017, bitcoin has increasingly been seen as a store of value, more comparable to digital gold than a payments network.
Ethereum and its major rivals Binance’s BNB, solana, and cardano have all seen their prices soar over the last year thanks to booming interest in smart contract, blockchain-based decentralized finance —both largely built on top of ethereum’s network.