What is Taproot?

Besides Schnorr signatures another item developed to promote bitcoin was the Taproot. Security, scalability, and privacy issues existed in Bitcoin, but with changes to the Bitcoin script and the addition of Taproot with Schnorr signature, functionality gets better.

You can also read: How much do you know about SegWit?

Introducing Taproot

Bitcoin has revolutionized the digital world, industry, and the economy. Despite the many ups and downs that this digital currency and other cryptocurrencies are experiencing such as MT. Gox and Bitcoin hard forks, continue to work with stability. However, there were many reforms in this area, and one of them was the reform of digital currency privacy. The nature of the Bitcoin blockchain is such that anyone can track transactions made on the network, which is a security bug in its own right.

Taproot was one of the solutions launched to increase the privatization of bitcoin and access to blockchain to undermine digital currency privacy. But what is Taproot, how to use it?

What is Taproot?

Taproot is a soft fork from Bitcoin created and released to improve the script security of this digital currency. Bitcoin transactions that work with Taproot are a bit more complex than other transactions, including time lock offerings and multi-signature requirements.

Without Taproot, the details of each transaction were known to step by step, even when using complex operations, but in the upgrade on the Bitcoin script, all transactions are seen as a single function. For example, if a transaction is on a bitcoin blockchain in the form of a Taproot, no one can tell if the transaction is a smart contract or a simple, peer-to-peer transaction. However, the address of the sender and receiver is known.

The original idea for Taproot introduce by Greg Maxwell and added to the core of Bitcoin in 2020 to complete the upgrade. Of course, this system releases along with Shnorr signatures and helped to upgrade the bitcoin script.

What are Shnorr signatures?

Shnorr signature is a cryptographic collection of signatures created by Claus Shnorr. This set of mathematical algorithms is used to facilitate the construction of signatures. The overall signature format was used as ECDSA in the development and operation of the Bitcoin infrastructure by Satoshi Nakamoto. One of the benefits of Schnorr signatures is that they combine different keys and place them within a bitcoin transaction.

What is the advantage of Taproot for Bitcoin?

In general, Taproot promoted the privacy option in Bitcoin. On the other hand, when combined with Schnorr signatures, it speeds up bitcoin transactions with optimization. Other benefits of this upgrade include:

• Reduce the amount of data stored in the blockchain

• More transactions per block

• Less transaction cost

Another option that Taproot added to the core of Bitcoin was to reduce the amount of transaction manipulation before it was approved. For this purpose, the number of attacks on transactions reduce.

Conclusion

Bitcoin initially had the wrong supply and poor security. With the introduction of Taproot as a form of security enhancement and the addition of Shnorr signatures, not only were policies stripped naked but the speed and volume of transactions changed so much that the rate of malicious attacks on bitcoin transactions was greatly reduced. In the world of digital currencies, the more flexible a currency and the more secure it is, the more users trust it. What do you think about Taproot and the changes it brought to the Bitcoin system?