Why Bitcoin's Privacy Update is Taking Forever (And Does This Threaten Bitcoin's

[JettSetto]

After years in the making, the Bitcoin dev team is finally ready to roll out Taproot and Schnorr signatures which will drastically enhance the privacy of Bitcoin transactions.

But many core developers say it could take over a year for the update to be officially adopted, since they need to get a majority of miners and nodes on board otherwise risk another SegWit-like political drama.

This video explores why it’s so difficult for the Bitcoin developers to implement such an important update and whether this difficulty is a troubling sign of Bitcoin’s potential stagnation.

https://youtu.be/Exbf7iQD7Bs

[Charles-Tim]

Schnorr signature, Taproot and Tapscript (BIP340 to BIP342) is now available some weeks ago, but said to be implemented in bitcoin core will take longer time as a result of disagreement on the finers by developers. Also know that the implementation is not about privacy like that, it is about multisig transactions to be indistinguishable from single payment wallet transactions.

Disagreements on the finer details
So-called forced signaling through the flag day would have the benefit of making Taproot default on any Bitcoin Core node running v.21; in turn, these nodes would only accept block data from miners who have also signaled the update, so in theory this would encourage miners to upgrade lest they lose their business.

But what if the miners have node users who do accept their blocks? This is one caveat to forced signaling: If too many miners and node users don’t accept Taproot and refuse to update their software, then the network could split into two competing chains. If enough economic interest backs the “old” version of Bitcoin, then the result could be two competing assets.

This outcome is partly why some developers, like Matt Corallo, think that forced signaling is unnecessary.

https://www.coindesk.com/taproot-ready-bitcoin-developers-debate-activation

[joniboini]

IMO I think the longer update time frame will always happen on any decentralized project (the larger/bigger community is, the longer it will take to happens). There's just no way to make it happen in one day since we have multiple conflicts of interest. If you want something to happen quickly without any "resistance" might as well stick with ICO projects.

[KIZILAGA]

Bitcoin never will be private.Baselayer dont allow it.Philosophy as well.

it is like asking ericcsonn 3310 to have 10 pixel front camera.

[davis196]

IMO I think the longer update time frame will always happen on any decentralized project (the larger/bigger community is, the longer it will take to happens). There's just no way to make it happen in one day since we have multiple conflicts of interest. If you want something to happen quickly without any "resistance" might as well stick with ICO projects.

Having a very low speed of implementation,due to the consensus required is one of the flaws of decentralization.If there's no 100% consensus,then Bitcoin Core can just be hardforked,which isn't necessarily something bad.
I remember that the 2017 Segwit fork kinda helped for pumping the Bitcoin price.
There is so much hype about the Taproot and Schnorr signatures and I hope that those changes will bring a lot of new members into the Bitcoin community,by making Bitcoin Core more private and secure.
 

[buwaytress]

It's not taking forever. Bitcoin development has always, always been conservative (relative to other blockchains) in terms of how much risk they want to take in terms of introducing something new that might destabilise the network or introduce new vulnerabilities. As a user on the lower spectrum of technical understanding, I personally feel more confident and safer with this development attitude. You want quick updates arbitrarily added, plenty of other projects to choose from =)

[Charles-Tim]

There is so much hype about the Taproot and Schnorr signatures and I hope that those changes will bring a lot of new members into the Bitcoin community,by making Bitcoin Core more private and secure.

You are right, but some people can get it wrong. Taproot and Schnorr signature will only make multisig transactions to look like normal single signature transactions, that is the privacy. But some people may think they can use it to CoinJoin or as a mixer to mix bitcoin transactions, but no, it does not work that way.

[pooya87]

unlike shitcoins, any update to bitcoin is always thoroughly tested and reviewed by a lot of experts before it is rolled out. the process obviously takes a very long time. billions of dollars are at stake here.
additionally again unlike centralized shitcoins, bitcoin is decentralized and reaching consensus in a truly decentralized system takes a long time too. that is why after the long implementation time, there is another long adoption time.

[Ucy]

IMO I think the longer update time frame will always happen on any decentralized project(the larger/bigger community is, the longer it will take to happens).There's just no way to make it happen in one day since we have multiple conflicts of interest.
If you want something to happen quicklywithout any "resistance"might as well stick with ICO projects.

Hope the "conflict of interest" (or probably resistance) is not connected to anonymity/privacy.

If you want such delays reduced in large decentralized community, just have principles/rules everyone must stick to during consensus or Bitcoin development.

The Principles in Bitcoin case are:
Decentralization
Transparency
Immutablity
Anonymity/privacy
Censorship resistant
Permissionless/trustlessness
Security/safety
Deflationary currency
Etc

Everyone can agree/disagree and build things on Bitcoin without violating the Principles.

The principles should be improved instead and not violated.
The Principles can be withdrawn or taken away from people who commit serious crimes while using Bitcoin. None should be taken away from innocent people... It's their rights.

[Carlton Banks]

Taproot isn't primarily about privacy anyway, it's more of a scripting improvement that adds _some_ privacy as a side effect. The bigger difference will be that combining Taproot with protocols built on top of Bitcoin will improve the power and simplicity of those protocols.

basic examples:

1. Payments sent through lightning channels become smaller
2. On-chain transactions that open channels become smaller



the big privacy improvement will come from the developing Coinswap protocol (which will also be improved using Taproot)

but Coinswap will not require Taproot, it's being built today. We already have every feature we need for a basic Coinswap protocol, and so it will happen regardless of how long the Taproot/Schnorr soft fork takes to go live on the Bitcoin network