One of Bitcoin’s most anticipated upgrades is now in effect. The Taproot upgrade is launched on the Bitcoin network and is expected to strengthen the smart contract function of the network. This upgrade is the first major upgrade since 2017. It was activated on the 709,632th block after being approved by 90% of the operating nodes.
The Taproot upgrade will allow developers to integrate smart contracts on the network, According to CNBCThe Schnorr upgrade is essentially “linear”, and is smaller and faster than ECDSA, allowing the deployment of lighter and more complex contracts on the network. “For Taproot, the most important thing is…smart contracts,” Fred Thiel, CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings, told CNBC. “It is already the main driving force for the innovation of the Ethereum network. Smart contracts essentially give you the opportunity to truly build applications and businesses on the blockchain,” he added.
The Taproot upgrade comes at the right time.Congestion and Ethereum gas costBitcoin’s biggest competitor has soared to new highs. The upgrade provides higher speed, better privacy and smart contract support for the BTC network, and may only attract a few DeFi projects, including smart contract-based applications to the BTC network.
However, users will not be able to access these features until their wallet supports this upgrade. Wallet developers must develop their own code for this integration and allow users to take advantage of the new upgrade.
The upgrade integrates Merkel’s Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST) and Schnorr signatures into the Bitcoin network, which will also improve existing Lightning Network transactions.
This concept was proposed after Gregory Maxwell integrated Segregated Witness (SegWit) on January 23, 2018.
Currently, Bitcoin Use Payment Script Hash (P2SH), which consumes the entire network by letting the underlying code display all possible conditions. However, most of these conditions do not need to be checked or displayed. In addition to the large amount of data, P2SH also pollutes the privacy of transactions.
However, MAST changes this data consumption and heavy load on the network. It aims to reduce large amounts of data consumption by finding only the necessary information that will be included in the Merkel tree (an encrypted data structure).
On the other hand, Schnorr signatures will replace the current Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), in which each user signs a transaction with their private key, allowing the token to go to their destination address.
Schnorr signatures will make simple transactions indistinguishable from more complex transactions. Although this does not mean increasing the privacy of a particular address, a transaction composed of multiple signatures and complex components looks the same as a simple transaction. The reason for increased privacy is that the keys used to authorize transactions will not be exposed to the same degree on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Photo: AFP/Justin Tallis
