A Makeover that Changes Everything: The Bitcoin Taproot Update

The large amount of computational power required to solve the preimage hash puzzles renders it so that true decentralization in Bitcoin will always be a mere pipe dream.

We see that very clearly today, with most network hashing power coming from only a few of the largest mining pools.

In January 2018, Bitcoin Core developer Greg Maxwell formally released the Taproot Update proposal.

This time, however, Taproot has near universal support.

What is special about the ECDSA is that it ensures that the aforementioned hashing process cannot be reverse-engineered.

This is to protect and enforce ownership rights within the Bitcoin network because your private key is your passport to the Bitcoin network.

Now, let’s say an individual — Alice, wants to make a transaction to another individual — Bob, on the Bitcoin network.

She then sends her signature along with her original message to Bob.

Bob is then able to easily verify that the digital signature is valid, given Alice’s public key and the original message.

Another key point is that Bob or anyone else should not be able to guess Alice’s private key, given just her public key.

The Schnorr Signature scheme operates similarly to ECDSA in that it allows for the generation of private and public keys in a safe and reliable manner.

Therefore, Satoshi decided to go with the more proven, more widely-accepted and open source ECDSA scheme.

With ECDSA, it will always be very obvious whenever a m-of-m or m-of-n Multisig address initiates a transaction on the network due to the simple fact that all such addresses will begin with a number ‘3’.

This master signature will make it a lot more difficult, or even impossible, for an observer to determine who signed in any given m-on-m or m-of-n Multisig transaction.

If Taproot can even deliver on 50% of what it promises, the moon will become the literal limit for Bitcoin.

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