Bitcoin Taproot Upgrade: The Major Innovation

Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency underwent a much-awaited upgrade on 14 November 2021 and was implemented on block 709,632 of the Bitcoin blockchain network. The news spread like wildfire and has gained the traction of technologists all around the world. Bitcoin Taproot, or the ‘soft fork’ upgrade makes the new implementation backward compatible with the older architecture. This upgrade made Bitcoin faster, cheaper, scalable, and programmable, apart from enhancing the network’s privacy. 

What Purpose Did Taproot Upgrade Solve?

In simple words, the Taproot upgrade was helpful in batching multiple signatures and transactions, jointly. Before the implementation of the Bitcoin Taproot update, the verification of transactions was done at a slow pace because each digital signature needed to be validated against a public key. Thus, there used to be unnecessary delay in validating the multi-sig transactions, which requires multiple inputs. With the Taproot upgrade, it became easier to batch multiple signatures and validated them together. 

The implementation of Taproot helped to combine single-sig and multi-sig transactions to form a single verification process. It also ensures better privacy as it is hard to segregate single-sig and muti-sig transactions. 

Attributes of Taproot 

The Taproot upgrade was mainly implemented on the three BIPs (Bitcoin Improvement Proposals) that focus on ensuring low transaction costs, higher security, and improved speed. 

Here are the highlighting attributes:

1. Schnorr Signatures (BIP340)

Schnorr Signatures is recognized for ensuring greater simplicity and efficiency in shortening signatures and including multiple keys while processing a Bitcoin transaction and aggregating a single unique signature for multiple parties. 

• Increased speed of transactions
• Higher security 
• Anonymity
• Sophisticated smart contracts

2. Tapscript (BIP342)

Tapscript is about the coding language upgrade. The opcode OP_CHECKSIGADD utilizes the Schnorr Signatures aggregation feature to allow more space in the blocks and to provide greater flexibility to the ecosystem. Thus, it makes it easier to implement smart contracts on the Bitcoin network. 

3. Taproot (BIP341)

The BIP341 upgrade uses MAST (Merkelized Alternative Script Tree), a form of Merkle tree, to increase the storage of quality of transaction data on the blockchain network. Earlier, the multi-signature transitions used to consume more data, but with MAST, it will be automatically reduced as a single mast will represent multiple verification scripts. 

Benefits of Bitcoin Taproot Upgrade

Taproot upgrade promised varieties of benefits, and the main ones are enlisted below:

• Better Smart Contracts

Smart contracts are placed on the blockchain and have self-executing capabilities, based on predetermined conditions. Smart contracts empower NFTs, NFT marketplaces, NFT games, trading platforms, and DeFi applications. Earlier Bitcoin lacked smart contracts, but with the Taproot upgrade, multiple transactions done through Bitcoin could be hashed as a single transaction. It saved time and helped to streamline the transactions done by different parties with ease. 

• Low Cost Transactions

Earlier, Bitcoin network was slow enough and used to handle only 4-5 transactions in a second. Therefore, transaction fees used to be too high to be managed by small businesses or individuals. With Bitcoin Taproot, the transaction costs were reduced heavily, and made it easy for blockchain users to enjoy the benefits of using the blockchain network. 

In fact, the Schnorr signatures also helped to reduce the amount of data required for completing a multi-signature transaction, apart from making them time-efficient.   

• Ensured Privacy

As cryptocurrency started becoming increasingly popular, the need for privacy and security became a matter of concern for crypto holders. Taproot upgrade helps to meet the expectations of conducting transactions with complete privacy.  

• Improved Network Efficiency

As the data is compressed, Schnorr signatures assist in eliminating redundant data stored on the blockchain network and make it more efficient, also helping to gain better scalability. 

• Better Compatibility

The Bitcoin Taproot upgrade relies on miners and wallets for its effectiveness. As the Schnorr signature has compatibility with the pre-existing ECDSA mechanism, it enables Bitcoin users to utilize the functionality of the core version of Bitcoin in a hassle-free manner. 

Significance of Taproot Upgrade

Taproot upgrade provided a boost to the Bitcoin network’s functionality and ensured speedy transactions in a cost-effective manner. Earlier, Bitcoin was limited to layer 1 development, while the Ethereum network was already supporting dApps and layer 2 solutions. With the Taproot upgrade, Bitcoin became capable of deploying smart contracts and expanding its use cases. Along with it, lowering fees helped in the wider adoption of the Bitcoin blockchain, and made BTC one of the most used coins in the cryptosphere.