Bitcoin Taproot Upgrade

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The Taproot upgrade is a major upgrade to Bitcoin due to be released in November 2021. It is the first upgrade to Bitcoin since 2017

In November, Bitcoin will be receiving the Taproot upgrade. The upgrade involves significant changes, which will drastically improve Bitcoin’s privacy, scalability, and flexibility, by reducing the amount of stored information required for more complex transactions. When Bitcoin is sent from one wallet to another, a key is required to unlock the Bitcoin. This key serves as a digital signature. Some transactions however are more complicated than others. Smart contracts and transactions which contain attached code that defines a sender/receiver, require multiple signatures. These additional signatures take up space on the already bulky Bitcoin blockchain, which leads to higher fees to the network, and a lesser degree of privacy. One of the ways the Taproot upgrade aims to counteract this clutter on the network is by combining the digital signatures needed to transact more complicated assets, into a new digital signature. This is achieved through the integration of a new device known as Schnorr.


What exactly is Schnorr?

Schnorr’s primary purpose is to safeguard user information, by removing excess information from the blockchain ledger. With the excess digital signatures consolidated into one, all of the multiple signature transactions listed on the ledger will appear no different than single signature transactions. Along with these advanced security parameters, Taproot makes it a bit easier for blockchain tracking firms to efficiently gather information.


MAST

Merklized Abstract Syntax Trees, or MAST is another feature to be added to Bitcoin with the Taproot upgrade. MAST creates a hash tree of individual scripts, which are part of a large condition set. This allows for Merklized bitcoin addresses that make it easier to verify Bitcoin transactions. Furthermore, MAST will allow smaller Bitcoin transactions to take place, without the need for lengthy scripts, as the transaction can be verified by part of the Merkle tree. Specifically, Bitcoin uses the Merkle tree in simple payment verification (SPV) lightweight nodes, which do not require the use of the whole ledger to verify a transaction.

Taproot was designed by Bitcoin Core programmer Gregory Maxwell and proposed in 2018. Bitcoin Core is the predominant open-source software which grants its users the ability to interact with the blockchain, by participating in the validation of Bitcoin transactions. Bitcoin Core was created by the software company Blockstream, based in Victoria Canada. Core is the software used to develop Taproot.

The Taproot upgrade will most definitely be a big step forward for Bitcoin. Over 90 percent of miners have already agreed to implement the upgrade, meaning we will see it come into effect in November.

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