Taproot Wizards Raises M to Boost Smart Contracts on Bitcoin

Taproot Wizards Raises $30M to Boost Smart Contracts on Bitcoin

Key Notes

  • Standard Crypto leads the investment round, marking a significant expansion from the project’s initial $7.5M seed funding towards Bitcoin innovation.
  • The initiative aims to resurrect Satoshi’s original OP_CAT feature, transforming it into a cornerstone for advanced Bitcoin smart contract capabilities.
  • Taproot Wizards’ influence extends beyond digital assets, with notable achievements in Bitcoin NFTs and global educational initiatives.

Taproot Wizards has completed a $30 million raise as part of its ambitions to make “Bitcoin magical again.” The Bitcoin Ordinals project shared the update in a Tuesday announcement via its co-founder Udi Wertheimer.

According to The Block, which first reported the news, this fund is the project’s first ever funding since its seed round of $7.5 million. While the round was led by Taproot Wizards’s early supporter Standard Crypto, it also had other venture capital (VC) firms like Cyberfund and Collider Ventures, among others, in participation.


Taproot Wizards Targets OP_CAT Ecosystem Growth with New Fund

Taproot Wizards was founded in 2023 by Udi Wertheimer and Eric Wall, both well-known figures in the crypto space. The project takes its name from the popular “Bitcoin Wizard” meme and the recent Taproot upgrade that improved Bitcoin’s functionality.

According to the firm, it will focus its freshly raised capital on growing the OP_CAT (short for OPcode Concatenate) ecosystem. This effort ultimately aims to take the smart contract functionality of Bitcoin to the next level.

To achieve this aim, however, Wertheimer explains that Taproot Wizards will have to commit a sizable amount of the fund to developing both its infrastructure and the talents in and around the company.

It might be worth noting that the OP_CAT feature was originally introduced by Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. This was at the time that the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator was still very active within the ecosystem. OP_CAT enabled automated transactions but was later disabled due to a lack of use cases.

Now, with the rise of Ordinals and Bitcoin-based applications, OP_CAT has once again been tipped as a potential powerful tool for innovation.

Growing Influence in the Bitcoin Space

The strides of Taproot Wizards, particularly within the Bitcoin community, haven’t gone unnoticed. In February 2023, the team minted Taproot Wizard #0001, a historic 4 MB block that would go down as the largest Bitcoin block and transaction at the time. The team was also behind Quantum Cats, which is arguably the most successful Bitcoin NFT collection in terms of market cap.

Interestingly, the project takes its influence even beyond the digital assets space. That is considering how Taproot Wizards has, on several occasions, hosted events around the world through its “Wizard School.”

While some Bitcoin purists maintain that introducing tokens and NFTs may bring network congestion and transaction fee issues, Taproot Wizards remains committed to expanding Bitcoin’s use cases.

Disclaimer: Coinspeaker is committed to providing unbiased and transparent reporting. This article aims to deliver accurate and timely information but should not be taken as financial or investment advice. Since market conditions can change rapidly, we encourage you to verify information on your own and consult with a professional before making any decisions based on this content.

Bitcoin News, Cryptocurrency News, News

Mayowa Adebajo

Mayowa is a crypto enthusiast/writer whose conversational character is quite evident in his style of writing. He strongly believes in the potential of digital assets and takes every opportunity to reiterate this.

He’s a reader, a researcher, an astute speaker, and also a budding entrepreneur.

Away from crypto however, Mayowa’s fancied distractions include soccer or discussing world politics.

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