[D-8] Bitcoin is getting 3 major upgrades - Schnorr, Taproot and Tapscript

[Jet Cash]

This is the first of my debate threads for members to earn merit for taking part in Bitcoin debates.

There hasn't been a significant upgrade to Bitcoin since SegWit, but I gather there is likely to be a soft fork later this year to introduce these 3 enhancements. I've already posted a thread about Schnorr signatures, and how they can improve block packing, but what about Taproot? I believe that these changes will help Bitcoin along its path to maturity and acceptance by investors. What do you think?

[jackg]

For anyone with interest in either of these topics but first hearing of them here, these two guides may be of help for: taproot and schnorr signatures

[solosequenosenada]

I am eager to see how Bitcoin advances during this year with the implementation of Schnorr signatures, taproot and tapscript.
The improved privacy provided by Schnorr and the space gains from combining both technologies will reduce our transaction fees and give us more space in blocks, among other benefits.

As you may have noticed my native language is not English, it is Spanish and from my small knowledge of English I try to bring this information to non-English speaking members of our community.
I have created a thread in which I am translating some talks by Andreas Antonopoulos and in this way bring these changes of the Bitcoin protocol to the Spanish speakers.

Soon I will publish a couple more post about Schnorr, Taproot, Tapscript, Grafroot.
Here is a video of Andreas with some basic information about it.

Excuse my English...

[Jet Cash]

Thanks for bringing this to the attention of the Spanish community. If you want to broaden your exposure, and post your topics on the English boards, then we can help you in the Fit to Talk English project. I created this to help members who don't have English as a first language create threads for the English boards in this forum. There was an active Spanish section as a result of the problems in Venezuela, but that seems to have fallen into disuse.

[Rengga Jati]

I have just read the information about this. And I am pretty sure that Bitcoin users can't wait for these upgrades. I have learned some benefits from the upgrades. Taproot will make better privacy, while Schnorr seems to trigger lower transaction fees and more speed. And another one is Typescript, it can make easier to detect errors on code compiling. These must be great advantages, right?

*For now, that's all that I can understand.

-With Taproot we will achieve next level of privacy – every transaction – no matter how complicated they will be, will look exactly the same to the outside observers.
-Schnorr, will allow to aggregate and shorten digital signatures. With these both upgrades we expect to lower the transaction fee from 30% to 75% and speed up block validation up to 2 times.
-Another fundamental upgrade is implementation of Typescript – it’s a programming language created by Microsoft as side-language of JavaScript. With Typescript Bitcoin could be optimized even further and developers will be able to detect even more possible errors during code compiling.

Source: https://trybe.one/top-5-bitcoin-trends-and-events-to-watch-in-2020/

What do you think?

This will improve Bitcoin to be better and surely may impact the price move. Bitcoin holders must be more confidence in Bitcoin after the upgrades are implemented. This makes sense because all this time, investors hope for better security and lower fees for transactions. And they finally get the answer by these upgrades. IMO  

*I'm sorry if this is a newbie understanding and amateur opinion. 

[Chikito]

I try to understand Schnorr and Taproot by reading all articles about it and actually agree when those proposals can be solving the problem of the scalability of Bitcoin. also, I and my friend have been already posted about both of them on my local thread Schnorr, Schnorr post 2, MAST (Merklized Abstract Syntax Tree) and Taproot

[aoluain]

I try to understand Schnorr and Taproot by reading all articles about it and actually agree when those proposals can be solving the problem of the scalability of Bitcoin. also, I and my friend have been already posted about both of them on my local thread Schnorr, Schnorr post 2 and Taproot

There is a lot to understand but as long as we start with the basics and understand them
it is beneficial.

We (most of us) know that there are a team of talented and dedicated developers
constantly working on Bitcoin and thats the main reason it wont fail or become
overtaken by another alternative project (BCH, BSV).

The two things most of us want and which has been debated on a lot is scalability
and privacy. In my sinple language and understanding of the technical details of
Bitcoin both Schnorr and Taproot will add more "value" and "usability" and potentially
take back some of that from mixing services and privacy projects like Monero
and Zcash.

The idea of masking transactions is exciting, significant and a real game changer
in my opinion.

As such, Taproot offers all the benefits of MAST, while under normal
circumstances no one will ever know that a regular transaction was hiding
such a complex smart contract as a fallback.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/taproot-coming-what-it-and-how-it-will-benefit-bitcoin

[pooya87]

i still have to thoroughly read the 3 new BIPs that were released specially the taproot one since unlike Schnorr i haven't really checked it out before. but my initial skim through surprised me that the version 1 SegWit is going to use a 32-byte witness program so the pubkey scripts would be bigger than version 0 by 12 bytes which negates the space saved by the 64-byte fixed sized Schnorr signatures (~9 bytes).

[TheNewAnon135246]

Aaron van Wirdum wrote a great article explaining what Taproot is and what it'll do for Bitcoin: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/taproot-coming-what-it-and-how-it-will-benefit-bitcoin

EDIT: I missed aoluain's post .

[aoluain]

Most people would think about scalability, but IMO privacy is biggest game changer for those 3 major upgrades. CoinJoin, mixer & multi-signature address would be more private and making blockchain analysis far more difficult.

The fact that the three BIP's are coming together means they compliment
and benefit each other. I've been reading up on Taproot with the prompt
from Jet Cash and have come accross some good write up's

Schnorr signatures and Taproot with Tapscript improve scalability and
privacy by hiding scripts and obscuring keys, and limit the ability for third
parties to ascertain the types of transactions occurring.

https://medium.com/galaxy-digital-research/taproot-schnorr-scalability-and-privacy-upgrades-for-bitcoin-e81b0df9101b

While the upgrades will add scalbility and privacy it looks like they will also
create a platform for future scalability and privacy developments.

[yazher]

This is my first time hearing these new updates, I thought Segwit was the last and final update since it will finally make us able to pay a low-cost transactions fees. with these new updates, we can say that Bitcoin will make another improvement steps ahead from its underdog rival (BCH).

[hatshepsut93]

There hasn't been a significant upgrade to Bitcoin since SegWit, but I gather there is likely to be a soft fork later this year to introduce these 3 enhancements. I've already posted a thread about Schnorr signatures, and how they can improve block packing, but what about Taproot? I believe that these changes will help Bitcoin along its path to maturity and acceptance by investors. What do you think?

BIP 141 was posted in the very end of 2015, and it took us 1,5 years to see SegWit activated - BIPs 340-342 were posted just recently, and I have a feeling they will take much longer to become a part of the protocol, and there's even a chance that some might never get accepted, or it will take much longer than expected. These changes have bigger scale than SegWit, so the devs will need more time to review and test them.

[aoluain]

From what I understand the "soft Fork" is going to or could happen
this year, by what I have read the BIP's are ready to be implemented,
all that is needed is agreement of the community and developers and
of course wallet upgrades.

Pieter Wuille a core developer and the person behind TAPROOT,
has commented in the below thread although there are no specific dates

“If all goes well, and it's clear that Taproot as proposed is what the ecosystem is willing to adopt,
it will be merged, and discussion will start about how to activate it on the network,” he previously told The Block.
“If that too goes well, a release with the activation will be published, and if/when the conditions to activate it are met,
we'll be live.”

Wuille made clear that the exact timeline of the soft fork’s launch is now in the hands of the ecosystem.

“The later steps in this process are more up to the ecosystem than up to me or the other contributors,” he said.

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/53958/taproot-schnorr-bitcoin-bip-development

[BrewMaster]

There hasn't been a significant upgrade to Bitcoin since SegWit, but I gather there is likely to be a soft fork later this year to introduce these 3 enhancements. I've already posted a thread about Schnorr signatures, and how they can improve block packing, but what about Taproot? I believe that these changes will help Bitcoin along its path to maturity and acceptance by investors. What do you think?

BIP 141 was posted in the very end of 2015, and it took us 1,5 years to see SegWit activated - BIPs 340-342 were posted just recently, and I have a feeling they will take much longer to become a part of the protocol, and there's even a chance that some might never get accepted, or it will take much longer than expected. These changes have bigger scale than SegWit, so the devs will need more time to review and test them.

i don't think it is that recent though.
Schnorr related discussions existed around the time of SegWit and the BIP was actually created last year in July and has been discussed and improved ever since. you can see it here: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2018-July/016203.html
it was only recently that the final draft was added to the "bitcoin account" on github.

[yslyv]

This is the first of my debate threads for members to earn merit for taking part in Bitcoin debates.

There hasn't been a significant upgrade to Bitcoin since SegWit, but I gather there is likely to be a soft fork later this year to introduce these 3 enhancements. I've already posted a thread about Schnorr signatures, and how they can improve block packing, but what about Taproot? I believe that these changes will help Bitcoin along its path to maturity and acceptance by investors. What do you think?

So complicated for me 

As far as i understand Taproot combines Schnorr and MAST.?

It is clear that a better privacy and scalability upgrades will be benefitical for the ecosystem.  if it will change the lightening network transactions more private and cheaper, i think it is something good huh?

[Zicadis]

Can you provide a source to show that these are going to be implemented in Bitcoin?

I know there's a lot of debate going on right now saying Schnorr signatures should be added in addition to Taproot, but I haven't seen much debate surrounding Tapscript.

Is this just speculation, or has it been formally announced that these changes will be implemented?

[poptok1]

Time locks! Finally.
We will get unbreakable time capsule for our coins, that's awesome.
Everyone with not so strong will and patience will get native blockchain support for making  HODL easier  
To me it all looks like a big hand shake in the general direction of big business aka banks or other financial institutions.
I have no problem with that, in fact that may be quite beneficiary which is obvious.

As far as i understand Taproot combines Schnorr and MAST.?

Taproot upgrade consists of Schnorr, that is a form of MAST but upgraded and possible protocol upgrade called tapscript.
Hope that this clears that out for you. But keep on researching though.

[aoluain]

Can you provide a source to show that these are going to be implemented in Bitcoin?

I know there's a lot of debate going on right now saying Schnorr signatures should be added in addition to Taproot, but I haven't seen much debate surrounding Tapscript.

Is this just speculation, or has it been formally announced that these changes will be implemented?

Its not speculation the 3 BIP's are coded all that is waiting to happen is
a decision on how to implement it so there will be discussion around that.

Tapscript provides the updated script part of Taproot, the two BIP's are
not that extensive but they  are what creates the privacy of the Schnorr signatures.

Brewmaster has posted a link to the Schnorr Signature proposition

-snip-

Schnorr related discussions existed around the time of SegWit and the BIP was actually created last year in July and has been discussed and improved ever since. you can see it here: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2018-July/016203.html
it was only recently that the final draft was added to the "bitcoin account" on github.

and here is a link to the 3 proposals > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2019-May/016914.html

[gmaxwell]

There is a *single* proposal.  It has three parts, for engineering/review reasons.  You can't separately implement the different parts and you wouldn't want to if you could.  By themselves each of the parts is not very useful, its their combination that makes them very useful. Sort of like how a car has many parts which can be separately engineered and analyized, but the drive shaft in isolation isn't useful.

Segwit was split across 4 BIPs (5 if you count the later bc1 address stuff).

[aoluain]

I had this single proposal in my mind, but in a sort of abstract way.
I thought Schnorr could be added on its own but Taproot was a Schnorr
add-on so to speak.

How I understand it is that Schnorr is enabling the scaling and some
privacy features while Taproot and Tapscript are additional complimentary
scaling and privacy features.

The 3 indeed acting as a single proposal as explained above
by gmaxwell and in one of my links.

Taproot was first introduced by Bitcoin Core developer Greg Maxwell in Jan. 2018 and formalized by another Bitcoin Core developer, Pieter Wuille, in May as a soft fork bundled with Schnorr.

*Credit to Greg Maxwell