Really? I’ve never heard that. Why was it not done before the taproot merge?
Discussion
NFTs etc weren't really a thing before taproot IIRC.
And once taproot merged it only makes sense to use taproot.
I think there were images in bitcoin all the way back in 2010 already.
True, but I believe taproot enabled larger images to be stored on the chain and at a cheaper cost, which is why we saw ordinals and the likes take off
Segwit really did that rather than taproot
I think it was a 1/2 punch. SegWit made it cheap; Taproot made it possible for data to be large.
Without the discount from SegWit, the fees for large images would likely be prohibitive. Without Taproot's relaxed limits, the full image wouldn't fit in a single, standard transaction. I could be wrong