Bitcoin's Taproot Privacy Tech Is Ready

One of bitcoin's most famous developers, Greg Maxwell, even aroused quite a bit of interest when he proposed something called Taproot back in January.

Far from providing full bitcoin privacy, Taproot's code offers a way to make all transactions on the blockchain look the same to outsiders.

Mathematician Andrew Poelstra pulled together a mathematical security proof in April, while Xapo engineer and Bitcoin Core contributor Anthony Towns put forward an idea for potentially decreasing how much data the privacy technique uses in July.

The continued work showcases why many believe Taproot to be a discovery that provides an "Enormous privacy win" for bitcoin, as Blockstream co-founder Pieter Wuille put it in a recent talk.

The reason is that Taproot would keep it a secret that any advanced payment is occurring on bitcoin.

More commonly known as smart contracts, there are a variety of complex transactions used in bitcoin, like the kind that enables the off-blockchain protocol lightning for more scalable bitcoin payments and other complex types that are still in development.

The signature scheme is supposed to be better than bitcoin's current signature scheme "In basically every way." And it enables Taproot because it allows signature data to be mashed together into one.

Towns thinks the privacy enhancement might be rolled in with a bunch of other upgrades going into bitcoin at the same time.

Towns guesses that still even other long-anticipated changes will go in at the same time, including MAST, a proposal to boost bitcoin smart contracts, and SIGHASH NOINPUT, a change that could usher in a more reliable lightning network - the tech bitcoiners hope will help bring bitcoin to the masses.

Wuille's been focusing on a proposal to deploy Schnorr and Taproot together, partly because he thinks the privacy addition from Taproot is so exciting, calling it an "Enormous win" for smart contracts in bitcoin.