The Taproot upgrade, activated in November 2021, significantly enhances the Bitcoin Lightning Network's privacy and capacity. Privacy is improved through Schnorr signatures and MAST, which mask multisignature and Lightning transactions as single-signature ones, reducing on-chain detectability. This boosts fungibility, making it harder to trace channel openings/closures. Capacity-wise, Taproot reduces transaction data size by aggregating signatures, lowering fees and increasing throughput. Taproot Assets further enable scalable asset transfers over Lightning, with instant, low-fee transactions. Quantitatively, Lightning Network capacity grew over 3x in 2021, reaching 3,220 BTC ($210M) pre-Taproot, with post-upgrade efficiency gains estimated to reduce complex transaction costs by up to 30%. Adoption remains gradual, but privacy and scalability improvements are substantial.web:0,1,18,21