- The Bitcoin network has given way to its Taproot soft fork, the first major update to its network since August 2017.
- This update aims to improve the scripting capabilities and privacy of the Bitcoin network.
The Bitcoin network recently activated Taproot, its first major update since Segregated Witness (SegWit), which ended with the emergence of the Lightning Network three years ago. and that appeared in order to address the scale problem of the virtual currency.
It should be noted that the original Taproot proposal was executed by Gregory Maxwell, former Blockstream creation lead, in 2018.
However, One of the main differences between this and the last network update is that SegWit focused on solving the flexibility of the negotiations and increasing the adaptability of the Bitcoin network, while Taproot will have the purpose of making exchanges more prosperous, the privacy of the network and its breadth to support proposals for smart contracts.
MAST
Taproot is a mild branch for the Bitcoin network, that among the aforementioned, it will also increase the volume of scripting and privacy, as well as help make smart contracts more efficient and private by revealing only the relevant parts of the contract when it is spent and by crediting something called the Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST), according to Taproot.watch, website created by Bitcoin developer Hampus Sjöberg to follow updates related to Taproot.
Basically, this tree will include a clause that will agree that both the issuer and the recipient of the deal can together sign a negotiation for its dissolution.
Regarding its structure, its Merkelized Trees have concise and complicated information settings, which were envisioned by one of the creators of public key crypto, Ralph Merkle.
Schnorr signatures
Given these characteristics, the sum of keys and signatures may make the aggregation of public keys and signatures possible, that is, if an exchange allocates a total of 100 transactions to 100 people, it will already be possible to narrow the 100 public keys in one key and all 100 signatures in a single signature.
This new element of condensation of signatures of Taproot, is known as Schnorr signatures, which allow users to add multi-signatures in a single transaction, which will make it difficult to differentiate between regular transactions and multi-signature transactions. In other words, these signatures hide if a MAST structure of the token or transaction is found at any time.
It should be noted that MAST will have the power to ensure that the different requirements in which the financing can be disbursed are individually hashed. and they are added in a Merkelized tree that will generate a Merkle root.
In this way, it is ensured that only situations that are carried out correctly can be discovered, which will allow the network to be more efficient in terms of information, than the P2SH agreements used previously.
About, Igneus Terrence, communications leader of the digital asset exchange Bybit, stated in an interview his views on this modernization:
“Using Schnorr, Tapscript and MAST, Taproot accepts a lower compilation of redundant data in the withdrawals of commercial activities of the Bitcoin Network, without giving up trust. By virtue of the minimal portion of information collected and transferred, the profitability for the last consumers they will see in better confidentiality, more efficiency and lower transaction fees“.
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