₿🛠️ Satoshi's 21 #004: Taproot 🥕
Details
Taproot is the name for a set of updates that will soon be activated in Bitcoin via a soft-fork.
Among other things and for a start, these updates will improve privacy and on-chain capacity by providing ways such that the available block space can be used more efficiently. Scripts can be more compact and reveal less information, and (with later additional updates) the inputs and outputs of transactions can be aggregated.
That means, true and actual on-chain scaling (i.e., not by just increasing the block size).
It is generally hoped that for example CoinJoin, which is a method to use Bitcoin in a more private way and a "many-users-to-many-users-in-one-transaction" format, should see more adoption simply because of the lower fees per user, as the available block space is used more efficiently than when all those users submitted many individual "normal" transactions as per usual.
This will be the case even more so with the Schnorr signature scheme, as "many-to-many" transactions can then be compacted by aggregating the involved public keys and signatures into one single so-called threshold public key and the corresponding threshold signature, making such an aggregated transaction look indistinguishable from a "normal" transaction, benefiting scalability and privacy even more. (This cross-input aggregation part is what's further down the roadmap though.)
Combined with MAST (Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree), also rather complex scripts ("Smart Contracts") can be made to look indistinguishable from "normal" transactions.
More detailed introduction: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/taproot-coming-what-it-and-how-it-will-benefit-bitcoin
Instructors and notable participants today include:
Michael Folkson, London BitDevs
Many more researchers and developers that are rather prominent in the Bitcoin field will likely chime in.
This meetup will be co-hosted with the London BitDevs.
Further Material:
- Recent London BitDevs about BIP 340 Schnorr: https://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/london-bitcoin-devs/2020-06-16-socratic-seminar-bip-schnorr/
- BIP 341 Taproot: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0341.mediawiki
- Reading List: https://pastebin.com/vsT3DNqW
Format: Socratic Seminar https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/op-ed-want-to-learn-about-bitcoin-try-a-local-socratic-seminar
Language: English
Target Audience: Highly technical, advanced/expert-level researchers and developers in the Bitcoin field, or related fields like Cryptography and Distributed Systems, with a strong curiosity to learn more about the design decisions in Bitcoin and the upcoming roadmap. This kind of seminar usually starts with conversations on a level that provides a good overview, but then goes deep into the details.
Streaming/Recording: Yes
Food and Drinks: None
Location: Online, Jitsi Meet via Freifunk Munich (simply works in your browser or with the app, easy to use, libre, open source, free as in beer, free as in speech, independently hosted, non-commercial, no data collection, no registration). More info: https://ffmuc.net/wiki/doku.php?id=knb:meet-en
In the meantime, you can try out the video conferencing software to test your setup here: https://meet.ffmuc.net/
Timetable:
(18:00 Announcement of the link to the video call, resp. the name of the room, and the link to the youtube stream in the comment section below. This should also trigger a reminder mail.)
19:00 Rolling start, chime in, say hello, introduce yourself off-the-record if you want to, organizational stuff
19:15 Livestream starts, optional on-the-record introductions, start of the seminar
22:00 (roughly) Wrap-up time, Livestream ends, optional break-out sessions
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₿🛠️ Satoshi's 21 #004: Taproot 🥕