What is the Taproot update and what changes for Bitcoin

Taproot is one of the most important updates for the Bitcoin blockchain (youngplatform.com/btc), which was updated on November 14, 2021 thanks to the green light given by 90% of the network nodes.

This is an important step forward in terms of privacy protection, security and efficiency as it introduces greater peace of mind for users who need their digital assets to be kept safe and at the same time be able to optimize the speed of transactions. Taproot will also increase the efficiency of smart contracts, i.e. smart contracts that allow you to schedule transactions on the blockchain.

Now let’s see all the advantages of Taproot and what will change for Bitcoin.

What is Taproot and what new features does it entail

As anticipated, Taproot is a very important upgrade for the Bitcoin blockchain. It was the biggest network update since the update SegWit of 2017, which led to the creation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH). For the uninitiated, after the SegWit update, some Bitcoin miners and developers launched Bitcoin Cash via a hard fork.

The next year, Gregory Maxwell, a Bitcoin Core developer and former CTO of Blockstream, then proposed Taproot as an advanced mechanism for validating transactions on the blockchain.

The major innovations introduced by Taproot come from company di Schnorrda Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST) and the programming language Tapscript. MAST is also a breakthrough for decentralized applications (dApps) because it allows you to store elements on the blockchain with greater efficiency than before, while still providing signed data when required.

Bitcoin’s multi-signature transactions allow users to set more than one private key needed to execute a bitcoin transaction. However, the multi-signature function explicitly disclosed all individual public keys in the transaction.

It is important to note that thanks to the update, when a transaction needs the signatures of multiple wallets, you will not see all the addresses involved, but you will only see a transaction between 2 wallets. Within the metadata of a complex transaction you will only see the main information, that is, those relating to the actual execution and you will no longer see all the code of the smart contract in question.

In short, all these innovations introduced by Taproot lead to an increase in privacy, efficiency and security for the Bitcoin blockchain.

How will Taproot improve Bitcoin?

Now let’s see what changes for the Bitcoin blockchain on a practical level. The most important changes in this update relate to the future of transactions and of smart contract. In the short term, this upgrade may seem insignificant, but its implications will become clearer over time.

Thanks to Taproot we could in fact witness faster, cheaper, more flexible and private transactions for transactions that require multiple signatures. From the point of view of flexibility, more elaborate confirmation requirements can be added to transactions, all without impacting commissions. In addition, transactions will be cheaper due to the decrease in the data to be recorded.

Taproot will ultimately help make it more scalable Lightning Network, that is the level 2 payment protocol superimposed on a blockchain-based cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin. This could mean in the future the possibility of carrying out an infinite number of transactions in an instant.

With Taproot, all parties in a transaction can thus cooperate to make complex transactions as simple as standard person-to-person transactions.