Bitcoin Soft Forks — Consensus Activation Registry (P2SH to Taproot)
Every consensus-changing Bitcoin soft fork, from P2SH to Taproot — BIP numbers, activation mechanism, block height and date, and what each one changed. Free CSV/JSON + REST under CC BY 4.0.
Quick answer
A Bitcoin soft fork is a backward-compatible tightening of the consensus rules: nodes that don't upgrade still accept the new blocks, so the network never splits if a majority of hashpower enforces it. Nearly every capability Bitcoin has gained — P2SH multisig, time-locks, SegWit, Taproot — arrived as a soft fork. This registry lists 8 consensus-changing soft forks with their BIP numbers, activation mechanism, activation block height and date, and what each one changed.
From P2SH (2012) to Taproot (2021), each soft fork tightened the rules without splitting the chain. The activation method evolved from timestamp flag days to IsSuperMajority to BIP9 version bits to Speedy Trial — increasingly miner-signalled, with users (UASF) as the ultimate backstop.
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| Soft fork | BIP(s) | Activation mechanism | Block | Activated | Status | What it changed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BIP30 — Duplicate-TXID rule | 30 | Flag day (block timestamp) | 91,842 | 2012-03-15 | Active | Disallowed a block containing a transaction whose ID duplicates an existing unspent transaction, closing a coinbase-overwrite flaw. |
| P2SH — Pay-to-Script-Hash | 16 | Flag day (block timestamp) | 173,805 | 2012-04-01 | Active | Introduced Pay-to-Script-Hash (the '3' addresses): senders pay to a hash of a redeem script that the recipient supplies when spending — the basis for practical multisig. |
| BIP34 — Height in coinbase | 34 | IsSuperMajority (75% then 95%) | 227,931 | 2013-03-24 | Active | Required the block height in the coinbase and bumped block version to 2, preventing duplicate coinbase txids and introducing version-based soft-fork signalling. |
| BIP66 — Strict DER signatures | 66 | IsSuperMajority (95%) | 363,725 | 2015-07-04 | Active | Enforced strict DER encoding of ECDSA signatures, removing an OpenSSL-dependent malleability source. Its activation caused a brief accidental chain split among non-upgraded miners. |
| CLTV — CheckLockTimeVerify | 65 | IsSuperMajority (95%) | 388,381 | 2015-12-14 | Active | Added OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY, enabling outputs spendable only after an absolute block height or time — a building block for payment channels and escrow. |
| CSV — Relative lock-time | 68, 112, 113 | BIP9 version bits (95%) | 419,328 | 2016-07-04 | Active | Relative lock-time (BIP68), OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY (BIP112) and median-time-past (BIP113) — together enabling bidirectional payment channels and the Lightning Network. |
| SegWit — Segregated Witness | 141, 143, 147 | BIP9 version bits + BIP91 lock-in | 481,824 | 2017-08-24 | Active | Moved signature (witness) data outside the txid, fixing transaction malleability, raising effective capacity via block weight, and laying the groundwork for Lightning and Taproot. |
| Taproot — Schnorr + Tapscript | 340, 341, 342 | Speedy Trial (BIP9, 90%) | 709,632 | 2021-11-14 | Active | Schnorr signatures (BIP340), Taproot (BIP341) and Tapscript (BIP342) — key aggregation and Merkelized script paths giving multisig and complex scripts better privacy and efficiency. |
Source: the Bitcoin BIP repository and the canonical activation heights in Bitcoin Core. Related glossary: soft fork, P2SH, SegWit, Taproot, version bits, CLTV, CSV. See the open data hub.
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Last reviewed June 19, 2026.