Taproot proposal

[cygan]

i can no longer wait for the time when the upgrade will be implemented

In Kraken Intelligence’s latest report, “Taproot Primer: An Upgrade For The Ages,” our team breaks down each of the three Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) included in the Taproot upgrade and explains the transaction efficiency and user privacy benefits the upgrade will bring to the Bitcoin protocol.

https://blog.kraken.com/post/10939/taproot-primer-an-upgrade-for-the-ages/

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[cygan]

please update all your nodes to the 22.0 version 👉 https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-22.0/

Bitcoin Core 22.0 is now added to the taproot count.

Roughly 0.4% of nodes are 22.0.

https://twitter.com/taproot_signal/status/1438455009738383362

[cygan]

another great tweet from the Kraken exchange

Nearly four years after #Taproot was proposed, activation is around the corner.

What changes could we see in Bitcoin & the broader crypto ecosystem?

Better protected data
More scalable & efficient network
Boost #LightningNetwork & Layer 2

https://twitter.com/krakenfx/status/1438850354100285444
https://kraken.docsend.com/view/9e9y7may8526z934

[Dabs]

quikie question: looks like taproot address will still look like bech32, just called bech32m and beginning with bc1? So just a matter of time after November 2021 we will start seeing wallets and taproot addresses and multi-sig and all that?

[garlonicon]

taproot address will still look like bech32, just called bech32m and beginning with bc1?

Yes, the only different thing is checksum, so the last six characters will be different. Some example:

Code:

decodescript 512079be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798
tb1p0xlxvlhemja6c4dqv22uapctqupfhlxm9h8z3k2e72q4k9hcz7vqqzj3dz bech32 (testnet)
tb1p0xlxvlhemja6c4dqv22uapctqupfhlxm9h8z3k2e72q4k9hcz7vq47zagq bech32m (testnet)

So just a matter of time after November 2021 we will start seeing wallets and taproot addresses and multi-sig and all that?

They exist even now on mainnet, but they are spendable by any miner. They also exist on testnet and signet, in test networks they are only spendable if you can produce a valid signature.

Edit: More than that: there are higher Segwit versions on mainnet, like v2 or v3, I remember I saw quite short "bc1z" address somewhere. However, before softfork activation that outputs can be taken by any solo miner or mining pool.

Edit2: I found it, see transaction c83bfc9946c88f78cf4708b991a3c1f54cbb1845ba5494fdd15478b202878f1e.

[ABCbits]

quikie question: looks like taproot address will still look like bech32, just called bech32m and beginning with bc1?

Aside from following bech32m (which already mentioned above), witness version of Taproot is 1 (while SegWit is 0), so the prefix for taproot will be bc1p, not bc1q.

So just a matter of time after November 2021 we will start seeing wallets and taproot addresses and multi-sig and all that?

As for wallet support, AFAIK only Electrum and Bitcoin Core have support for Taproot.

[Dabs]

As for wallet support, AFAIK only Electrum and Bitcoin Core have support for Taproot.

Can't wait for what's going to happen with Electrum. It would seem to make sense it will support multi-sig with taproot.

[cygan]

a very informative article that shows all the advantages of taproot

Key Points

• After Taproot, Bitcoin will be able to compete with privacy coins in terms of functionality.
• Transaction fees will drop dramatically due to better data storage.
• Decentralized finance services could be feasible on Bitcoin's network due to lower fees.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/10/01/heres-why-you-should-be-excited-about-bitcoins-tap/

[cygan]

The Taproot upgrade that goes live through a hard fork on 16 November 2021 will bring in 3 new Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs), all merging together to become the latest version of Bitcoin. Prominent Bitcoin developer Greg Maxwell proposed BIP-340, 341 and 342 back in January 2020. By the end of 2020, these 3 proposals had 74% adoption by miners. By mid-2021, the approval rate was above 90%, meaning that these 3 proposals are finally ready to be rolled out.

https://cryptoslate.com/cryptomeister-explains-why-taproot-is-so-important/

btw, not even a month and then it is so far

[pooya87]

The Taproot upgrade that goes live through a hard fork

https://cryptoslate.com/cryptomeister-explains-why-taproot-is-so-important/

I'm not sure an article that calls Taproot a "hard" fork is worth reading, and surely enough after skimming through the article it is filled with other small and big mistakes.

A funny one: "signature algorithm allows users to generate public and private keys."!

[Charles-Tim]

For the most part, the average Bitcoin user
The Taproot upgrade that goes live through a hard fork on 16 November 2021 will bring in 3 new Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs)

Very possible the block hight for Taproot transaction will be November 16, but to make it accurate, it is better to use the block height or it is best to include the block height along (which is block 709632) with the date., which is the Taproot activation block.

For the most part, the average Bitcoin user For the most part, the average Bitcoin user won’t notice or feel any impact from the Taproot upgrade. If you’re a Lightning Network user, then you’ll benefit from cheaper fees and faster confirmation time when opening and closing channels. Also, if you use smart contracts, you can do so knowing that your data and history is more secure than it has ever been on Bitcoin.

Taproot will significantly reduce input size, making consolidation and many inputs paying to one or two addresses possible with lower fee if compared to legacy addresses and segwit. Although, segwit has lower output size. Taproot addresses with many inputs and paying to one or two addresses make Taproot transaction cheaper if compared to legacy, nested segwit and even native segwit. But will be getting otherwise for segwit transaction if the output is increasing. So one or two inputs with many outputs (paying to many addresses) will make segwit transaction cheaper.

One of the most significant aspect of Taproot are multisig transactions, even 50-of-50 multisig transaction will count as a single pubkey transaction because of Schnorr signature means of keys aggregation, making this type of transaction very cheap. Because Multisig Wallets are safer and more secure, I hope this will make many people to start using Multisig as the transaction will be equivalent with normal wallets with single public key.

For the most part, the average Bitcoin
Core wallet users will need to upgrade their client to the new version, but for everyone else, there’s nothing to do.

Yet, anyone that want to make use of Taproot has to update his wallet if the new wallet version update support it.

I'm not sure an article that calls Taproot a "hard" fork is worth reading

I think that needs to be corrected, if hard fork is when a blockchain splits into two and each with different paremeters and independent of each other, then Taproot is not a hard fork but a soft fork because the upgrade is still everything about bitcoin blockchain as majority of miners supported the upgrade.

[ABCbits]

The Taproot upgrade that goes live through a hard fork

https://cryptoslate.com/cryptomeister-explains-why-taproot-is-so-important/

I'm not sure an article that calls Taproot a "hard" fork is worth reading, and surely enough after skimming through the article it is filled with other small and big mistakes.

A funny one: "signature algorithm allows users to generate public and private keys."!

What do you expect from sponsored post/article?

For the most part, the average Bitcoin
Core wallet users will need to upgrade their client to the new version, but for everyone else, there’s nothing to do.

Yet, anyone that want to make use of Taproot has to update his wallet if the new wallet version update support it.

The sentence you quoted refer to Taproot activation, so Bitcoin Core user also not required to upgrade the software due to backward compatibility.

[JayJuanGee]

I'm not sure an article that calls Taproot a "hard" fork is worth reading

I think that needs to be corrected, if hard fork is when a blockchain splits into two and each with different paremeters and independent of each other, then Taproot is not a hard fork but a soft fork because the upgrade is still everything about bitcoin blockchain as majority of miners supported the upgrade.

More importantly is that nodes support it, right?

[Charles-Tim]

More importantly is that nodes support it, right?

Yes, full nodes will validate Taproot transactions and propagate it to other nodes.

[pooya87]

Taproot will significantly reduce input counts, making consolidation and many inputs paying to one or two addresses possible with lower fee if compared to legacy addresses and segwit. Although, segwit has lower output counts.

I think you mean "size" not "count" because input count is the number of UTXOs (aka coins) you are spending and has nothing to do with Taproot or other pubkey script types. However the size of the witness and consequently the weight of the transaction could be* lower compared to the older types.

"Could be" because if the script spending route is chosen the witness could be bigger than a normal P2WPKH witness.

if hard fork is when a blockchain splits into two and each with different paremeters and independent of each other,

Wrong. Whether blockchain splits into two or not has very little to do with whether the fork is a soft fork or a hard fork. The only thing affecting the chain split is how many are going to support it. If it is the majority (like in case of SegWit or Taproot or any of the other soft forks we had) the fork will be smooth otherwise we can get a lot of disruption.

then Taproot is not a hard fork but a soft fork because the upgrade is still everything about bitcoin blockchain as majority of miners supported the upgrade.

Basically I prefer saying Taproot is a soft fork because it is backward compatible which means the old clients don't have to upgrade to follow the new chain.

Soft forks could also cause a chain split although slightly harder. Imagine if the hashrate support for a soft fork called X was only 50%. The 50% for X would start at a block containing a new form of transaction while the 50% against would reject that block and build a replacement block which the first 50% would reject. We easily end up with 2 chains with equal hashrate.
The "unchanged" nodes would of course see both these chains as valid and have to have very deep reorgs every couple of blocks. The change the nodes have to implement is to explicitly reject one chain which would then be like a hard fork since all nodes have to upgrade to that if they want to continue without reorgs.

Conversely a hard fork can have no chain split at all if it has the majority support (>95% hashrate).

More importantly is that nodes support it, right?

Yes, full nodes will validate Taproot transactions and propagate it to other nodes.

To be clear:
- Old nodes* receiving Taproot transactions in their mempool will reject the transaction as non-standard and will not propagate it to other nodes
- New nodes** will both verify and propagate Taproot transactions received in their mempool
- Old nodes receiving a new block containing Taproot transaction will not verify the said transaction*** but will propagate the block (after verifying everything else about it).
- New nodes will obviously validate everything and propagate the block.

* Old nodes are the unmodified bitcoin core nodes that don't have the code to verify Taproot transactions like 0.16.0
** New nodes are those bitcoin core nodes that have the code to verify Taproot transactions like 22.0
*** They perform some basic checks and not much else

[JayJuanGee]

More importantly is that nodes support it, right?

Yes, full nodes will validate Taproot transactions and propagate it to other nodes.

To be clear:
- Old nodes* receiving Taproot transactions in their mempool will reject the transaction as non-standard and will not propagate it to other nodes
- New nodes** will both verify and propagate Taproot transactions received in their mempool
- Old nodes receiving a new block containing Taproot transaction will not verify the said transaction*** but will propagate the block (after verifying everything else about it).
- New nodes will obviously validate everything and propagate the block.

* Old nodes are the unmodified bitcoin core nodes that don't have the code to verify Taproot transactions like 0.16.0
** New nodes are those bitcoin core nodes that have the code to verify Taproot transactions like 22.0
*** They perform some basic checks and not much else

I thought that I was attempting to make a more political rather than a technical point in terms of there potentially being a contentious upgrade and the nodes are going to be the ones that decide which fork is the actual bitcoin rather than the miners deciding .. and surely hopefully any kind of change or contention is going to be so obvious that 90% or more of the nodes are going to pick a direction to follow, which is likely to end up being the dominant chain if that many nodes go in that direction, even if miners decide to go in the opposite direction.

We have had those kinds of challenges in the past concerning differences of opinion regarding what way to go (Big blocks versus small blocks starting around 2016 and culminating in late 2017 (and continuing to linger for a while.. and to smaller extents these days), but no real follow through in which the miners ended up deciding to actually go contrary to the nodes.. at least not so far has that challenge really been put to test - even though the word on the street is that the nodes decide what chain is the real bitcoin.

This last time around (over the summer), with taproot signaling, seemed to work out a resolution in advance to allow the miners to choose to signal for taproot instead of the nodes forcing the decision upon the miners... so yeah staving off a potential contentious issue that ended up not being contentious as the 2017 block size juxtaposing ended up being with one group actually deciding to fork off (bcash) and the other side end up backing down (segwit2x).  Maybe I was attempting to make a wee bit different point - instead of getting caught up in technicalities?

[pooya87]

I prefer calling it "the community" supported Taproot soft fork.

the word on the street is that the nodes decide what chain is the real bitcoin.

If you ask me this statement is just as wrong as saying "miners decide what chain is the real bitcoin". Bitcoin network consists of both miners and full nodes and we can't just ignore one part for the other. In any kind of fork we have to get both groups to come to an agreement.
We could even consider another component, the "economy" as part of the decision making process. That can be any bitcoin user, merchants, and all businesses that were built on top of the Bitcoin we know today. In fact one of many reasons why shitcoins such as bcash and bcashsv are considered failed attempts is exactly this.

[JayJuanGee]

I prefer calling it "the community" supported Taproot soft fork.

the word on the street is that the nodes decide what chain is the real bitcoin.

If you ask me this statement is just as wrong as saying "miners decide what chain is the real bitcoin". Bitcoin network consists of both miners and full nodes and we can't just ignore one part for the other. In any kind of fork we have to get both groups to come to an agreement.

I remember that part of the threat from both the big blockers (coming even prior to the Bcash fork) was that all the miners supported big blocks, so the threat was that they were going to go over to the bcash fork because it was more friendly to that idea..

They did not end up going to the bcash fork - except for opportunistically to make money and mostly temporarily.

Similar was the segwit2x threat.  So many of the big businesses (including miners) were trying to suggest that there was a need to be an economic player and to have hashing power to decide what was going to be the right bitcoin block.  The threat or bluff ended up not following through.

I am not trying to open up an old debate, but just suggesting that I largely buy into the vision that the nodes decide what is bitcoin,, and there were threats against BIG players that did not play out.. so trying to suggest that miners have some kind of meaningful say.. just seems to be getting it wrong.. and I don't consider that to be how we would want bitcoin to be anyhow...

Of course, the taproot activation was an attempt to just make sure that the miners were onboard, and surely better to avoid drama if possible.. but if push were to come to shove, there were probably quite a few nodes that would have been willing to play hardball to force the hands of miners.

Again, I am not trying to open up meaningless conversation, but I don't really buy any of the stories that either try to suggest that miners call the shots or that somehow the nodes have to cow-tow to the demands of miners... and sure hopefully in the end, miners are able to be incentivized to want to mine bitcoin both long term and short term.. and sure of course planning to mine into the future, and surely profits help with that aspect, too.

We could even consider another component, the "economy" as part of the decision making process. That can be any bitcoin user, merchants, and all businesses that were built on top of the Bitcoin we know today. In fact one of many reasons why shitcoins such as bcash and bcashsv are considered failed attempts is exactly this.

Of course, there are varying network effects that build over time, and surely satoshi structured bitcoin in such a way to have great incentives.. and yeah some of those forks do screw around with incentives and also cause distrust over their levels of decentralization.. so not as many folks are going to want to build upon various scams... I am not claiming to know everything or even attempting to describe the various incentives.. that even there can be a lot of distrust, but each person acting in their own interest and even trying to cheat bitcoin has decent chances of making bitcoin stronger..

[gmaxwell]

The role and influence of miners is often radically overstated by the general public.  People are so used to systems based on trust and authority that they automatically assume someone is "in charge" of any system they see, and miners are often the target of these assumptions.  But for both technical and economic reasons their influence is much more limited than these uninformed assumptions-- and not by accident, but due to the intentional incentives in the design of Bitcoin.

There are even parties that some might call "miners" that could reasonably argued to have almost no significant role: you could imagine a "miner" that has never even heard of bitcoin, has never used Bitcoin, and simply performs sha256^2 operations for whomever has wired them the USD.

But that said I agree with pooya87, silly extreme examples aside they're also an important part of the ecosystem with influence too (and not only because many parties that are miners are also participants in other respects as well).  JayJuanGee's points make sense as a reaction to people's *over* statement of the role of miners-- e.g. the clearly false claims that they control the system outright.   But even though the overstatements are so ubiquitous as to make a strong rebuttal the most commonly correct answer, we shouldn't forget that economies are far more nuanced than simply internet arguments and that large miners are an economically significant part of the Bitcoin ecosystem even if they aren't the rulers that the public with their authority-eccentric-brainwashing sometimes assumes they are.

Miners are far from unique in suffering over-estimates of their authority in the system too-- people do the same thing with developers and exchanges, while underestimating the importance of people who own Bitcoin and transact with Bitcoin.  This is particularly sad because the parties we can expect to be most loyal to Bitcoin are the long term holders (and after them, miners but only to the extent that their power / space / devices can't just be pointed at something else). Transacting parties that don't keep exposure will always be a bit fair-weather allies (e.g. it's common that when a merchant adds bitcoin they just integrate bitpay or similar and then accept whatever cryptocurrency the api supports-- if the API supports BSV-sue-the-bitcoin-developers-scam-token, they'll accept that too), and exchanges actually profit from market volatility, churn, and confusion.

[I think Bitcoin developers have historically been big allies, but this isn't because they're developers... it's because the long time developers are all Bitcoin holders who protect their investment by developing-- and developers that were less interested in owning bitcoins have left. Developers who just developed because they were collecting a paycheck could be expected to have miner like alignment (except with bitcoin specific expertise in the place of equipment).  ... and otherwise, just the fact of dealing with the technical details of Bitcoin makes it hard to take anything for granted and assume that other people will solve the problems.]

The real fault is the reflex that makes people mistake Bitcoin for something that has a central authority.  I can't think of too many people mistakenly assuming that varrious parties are in charge of the English language, so perhaps this flawed assumption can be cured.

[Dabs]

** New nodes are those bitcoin core nodes that have the code to verify Taproot transactions like 22.0

I just want to confirm that new nodes also includes 0.21.0 and 0.21.1 ? Or what is the earliest core version that has some taproot code in them already? A good chunk of the current network are still running 0.21.1 and 0.21.0, and a not insignificant are also running 0.20.1 and 0.20.0.