Note how half of the Bitcoin network nodes don't support taproot yet, but it's irrelevant. The few nodes that matter do support it.
Taproot is a softfork, which means a tightening of the rules. There are basically a set of placeholder script types, that are currently undefined by the network ruleset. By being undefined, you can basically add whatever garbage you want, and it will technically be valid.
So, blocks that are mined now with taproot transactions are still considered valid by nodes and miners that haven't upgraded or don't support the change. Their nodes just see these transactions as unintelligible garbage, but still permissible.
However, the risk these nodes take on by not upgrading support, is that they might receive a block, assume it's valid even though there are transactions they don't understand, but in fact are invalid taproot transactions and rejected by the upgraded network. This is a much greater concern for miners than regular nodes, because miners have severe economic risks associated with incorrectly assuming an invalid block is valid, whereas non mining nodes don't have as great of a risk, because they generally wait for several confirmed blocks before assuming their transactions were confirmed.
Citation badly needed.
For taproot to rollout, you need wallet providers, exchanges, nodes and miners to agree. There are hundreds/thousands of different participants in each one of these categories across the world. Specifically, 90% of nodes need to signal for it.
> Specifically, 90% of nodes need to signal for it.
Wrong, 90% of mined blocks need to signal it, not 90% of nodes. Big difference:
> at least 90% of the blocks mined in any of the designated two-week difficulty periods "signal" their support for the upgrade, then the activation process can begin. To be more precise: 1,815 out of 2,016 blocks mined within a period have to include a little piece of encoded information that indicates that the miners who mined those blocks are in favor of the upgrade.
https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/06/12/locked-in-bitcoins-...
Either admit that bitcoin is centralized, or contend that it isn't. Don't just ask for a footnote.
If you want any chance at mining, you'll need an ASIC miner.
And the few companies that sell them, are sold out.
Or there's some shady dealers that only will accept Bitcoin for payment, so you basically have no insurance if they don't deliver the miner.