Bitcoin is upgrading !!!

Like Taproot and Schnorr signatureswill increase Bitcoin's privacy and scalability
Taproot and Schnorr signatures are the next ones to introduce updates to increase the privacy and scalability of the Bitcoin network.

Privacy and Security UpdatesTaproot scaling and Schnorr signatures have made significant progress recently, moving from a theoretical idea to real code. These updates combine several different technologies that have been offered over the years, and each is technically and conceptually unique.

Firstly, these updates include Merklizedabstract syntax trees (Merklized Abstract Syntax Trees - MAST), which developers of smart contract technologies have been discussing since 2013. The update also includes Schnorr signature technology, proposed in 2015 by developer Pieter Wuille, and Taproot, a privacy technology proposed in 2018 by Greg Maxwell.

Confidentiality and scaling are whatBitcoin is still missing. Despite the need for these changes, mass updates are difficult to implement in Bitcoin due to the large number of independent users, miners and services scattered around the world. One of the burning issues is the need to reach an agreement on what exactly will be included in the update.

“I think the biggest problem in this process is creating an accurate set of features for simultaneous deployment,” said Blockstream researcher Tim Ruffing.

Scale of Update

First, it's worth remembering that this update is not a magic pill that will instantly turn Bitcoin into a super-scalable and private cryptocurrency.

However, the update will improve the network in several waysaspects. First, more complex transaction types will become easier to use. In a typical transaction, one person signs it, thus proving that they own the BTC and have the right to send it. On the other hand, multi-signature transactions require multiple signatures. This update will make these transactions easier.

“It is likely that more and more wallets will besupport multi-signatures because it will become cheaper and more confidential with Taproot, ”said Blockstream researcher Jonas Nick.

Multi-signature technology has many importantuse cases. First, the Lightning Network, which depends on multi-signatures, can potentially speed up and scale payments for Bitcoin. If Lightning really turns out to be the future of Bitcoin, as some enthusiasts suggest, this improvement can have a big impact, significantly reducing the cost of transactions.

In addition, multi-signature transactions withUsing new technology will look just like regular transactions. Thus, even despite the openness of the Bitcoin blockchain, where anyone can easily find a specific transaction, with this technology, observers will not know which transactions are carried out using Lightning channels.

“Opening and closing Lightning channels will be indistinguishable from regular payments. It also means that opening a Lightning channel will cost the same as a regular transaction, ”Nick said.

Schnorr Signatures - Improving Efficiency

To understand the essence of these updatesIt takes some understanding of how Bitcoin works. Only with the correct private key can you sign a transaction, thereby sending bitcoins. This process creates a signature that attaches to the transaction.

Sometimes it takes more thanone man. When such a multi-signature transaction is signed using ECDSA (Bitcoin's current signature method), it creates a separate signature for each wallet. However, this can be avoided - with the help of Schnorr signatures, you can combine all this data into one signature through key aggregation.

As Bitcoin Optech notes, the merger will helpreduce the size of this type of BTC transaction by 30% – 75%. Scaling technologies like this are important because downloading the full blockchain is the most secure and trust-minimizing way to use Bitcoin. However, now for this you need to have more than 300 gigabytes of free space and be patient - downloading and processing the entire database takes from several hours to several days.

Schnorr's signatures will also make possible the so-called "batch verification", which allows you to immediately verify the validity of several signatures.

Developers have long suggested using“Cross-aggregation of signature entries” for embedding Schnorr's signatures in bitcoin transactions. Typically, each transaction requires more than one signature — one for each “input”. At the same time, Schnorr's signatures can theoretically squeeze together all these signatures for each transaction.

But the implementation of this function will have to wait,as the developers are still working on some security issues that prevent this feature from being added to Bitcoin for now. However, with the addition of Schnorr signatures, this functionality will be one step closer to implementation.

“This could be implemented in a future update,” Ruffing said.

MAST: Enhanced Smart Contracts

While Merkelized Abstract Syntax Trees (MAST) didn't make it into the title of the update, it's an interesting technology that developers have been discussing for a while.

To understand how MASTs work, you canimagine a situation where a user wants to simultaneously implement two conditions when sending a transaction: add multisignatures, and also schedule the transfer of BTC for a specific date and time. Now, when one of these scripts is executed, the full script is added to the transaction, taking up a lot of space and showing the world what conditions the user has applied.

MAST implements these conditions on a new principle,which looks like a tree. Each branch of the tree contains various conditions that the user must fulfill in order to spend bitcoin. Then, only the top of the tree hash is included in the Bitcoin blockchain instead of all the script conditions.

Taproot - Enhancing Privacy

Taproot relies on MAST and Schnorr signatures tocreate confidential smart contracts. Typically, transactions with complex scenarios using MAST are now highly prominent on the blockchain. Even though MASTs themselves are more privacy-preserving, the format of these transactions is slightly different, so it is easy to determine whether a script is being used or not.

Using signature aggregation whichProviding Schnorr signatures, Taproot makes these transactions look like regular transactions. However, this does not work for each MAST contract, only for shared costs, where one branch of the Merkle tree is a multisignature transaction that has been successfully used. If any other branches are used, the advantage of confidentiality disappears. However, developers expect that the option of joint spending will be the most common.

In addition, there is Tapscript that will help facilitate further improvement of the scripts.

“Although changes to BIP Tapscript do not immediately benefit the average Bitcoin user, they are designed to make it easier to update the scripting system in the future,” said Nick.

The developers are currently actively testingthis package of new technologies. So far, no major problems have been discovered, but developers continue to test the update before adding it to Bitcoin via a soft fork.

“More recently, we proposed some small changes to make the Schnorr signature mechanism more robust against implementation errors and physical attacks,” Nick said.

As developers create andexpand the technology of Bitcoin, it is changes like Taproot and Schnorr signatures that can make the platform more complete for developers and financial experts.

source: https: //bits.media/kak-taproot-i-podpisi-shnorra-povysyat-konfidentsialnost-i-masshtabiruemost-bitkoina/