Translation: A Jian
Translation: A Jian
One of the latest bitcoin upgrades — Taproot — will change the way bitcoin works, taking it to the next level. It changes the signing method of transactions, removes unnecessary information exposure (such as whether smart contracts are involved), and reduces the overall amount of data that a transaction needs to occupy. Therefore, it has a positive impact on user privacy, and also allows more complex transactions to be inserted into a block, improving the efficiency of the network.
While Taproot is backward compatible, meaning users don't need to do anything special to use it, miners need to commit to updating the software. The "Signalling for Taproot (Taproot Upgrade Promise)" activity started last week, so far 6 mining pools have indicated that they are ready to upgrade, and SegWit will be upgraded from version 0 to version 1. (Editor's note: The original text was written on March 7, 2021. At the time of translation, Taproot's upgrade was a foregone conclusion. It needs to be said that the upgrade of the Bitcoin protocol is a process, not an instant, because no upgrade nodes can also remain in the network.)
Although many people are expecting Taproot to bring privacy and scalability improvements as beautiful as they are in theory, some people worry that it will follow in the footsteps of Segwit's first implementation. Two years after the activation of the soft fork, the acceptance Only then can it break through 50%.
It is not the purpose of this article to compare the advantages and disadvantages of Taproot. Many aspiring bloggers have explained the main points in depth, such as this approachable post from SlushPool operator Braiins (Chinese translation). Our considerations are quite simple, what exactly the Taproot upgrade means for hardware wallets, and what interesting things to expect if Taproot can be successfully activated in November.
Taproot fits Bitcoin’s conservatism
Like it or not, one of the governance rules of the Bitcoin network is that the block size is bounded. This means that a block can only contain about 3,000 transactions, which translates to a throughput of about 5 transactions per second. In absolute terms, this number is quite low, but there are a number of reasons why this trade-off is better than other, more centralized solutions:
The transaction is cleared within a period of time, unlike debit cards and the like, which have to wait for confirmation by a third party
Upgrades such as the Lightning Network can compress thousands of off-chain transactions into one on-chain transaction
No one can cancel, reverse or intercept a transaction that is already on the chain
Some critics of Bitcoin have proposed increasing the block size, but this is a naive and dangerous approach. Conversely, the conservative nature of Bitcoin (Chinese translation) led developers to research other more elegant ways to reduce the size of transactions and improve Bitcoin with smarter cryptography. Keeping Bitcoin's blocks small also indirectly enables greater decentralization.
For the average user who wants to run a node themselves, they can now use inexpensive solutions (such as a Raspberry Pi and a hard drive), or take an old laptop and download a copy of the Bitcoin network. Anyone can help verify transactions on the Bitcoin network and protect the security of the Bitcoin blockchain, regardless of location, without the need to purchase new hardware and continuously add storage space, and without relying on centralized service providers (such as exchanges ) to synchronize and validate the blockchain on their behalf.
After increasing the block size, the cost of running a node for an individual can quickly become prohibitive. But Taproot introduced a new signature scheme, Schnorr signature, which can further reduce the size of transactions on the basis of SegWit v0, that is, allow more transactions to be inserted into a block. This is equivalent to increasing the size of the block, but it does not increase the bandwidth requirement for synchronizing a node, nor does it inflate the cost of node storage, ensuring that participation in the Bitcoin network is still within the reach of ordinary users.
How does Taproot improve the hardware wallet experience?
For hardware wallets, Taproot promises to bring greater efficiency, reflected in the time it takes to send transactions; the greater the average number of inputs and outputs of preceding transactions, the greater the time savings. This is because with Taproot, the wallet does not need to spend the transaction history of the previous (often large) transactions.
For a transaction with only one input and two outputs, using Taproot can save about 50% of the time (compared to SegWit v0 transactions). This number looks great, but in actual use users will not feel much. But as the number of inputs increases, so does the time savings: with 100 inputs (but still 2 outputs) the time to send a transaction can be reduced by 90%.
For more complex transactions with a large history of inputs and outputs, such as CoinJoined transactions, the savings are even greater. Assuming there are 100 participants in a mixed currency, the signature time using Taproot can be dozens of times faster than the current SegWit transaction. Trezor has plans to introduce CoinJoin functionality by the end of this year, and Taproot will make these private transactions faster and easier.
Taproot's Benefits for Multi-Signature Wallets, Lightning Network and Smart Contracts
As Bitcoin users become more diverse, using different types of addresses, second-layer solutions like the Lightning Network, or other types of smart wallets, it becomes easier to identify the activity of a specific wallet, which means more privacy. at stake. Schnorr signatures remove the need to expose smart contract scripts, making all transactions look the same, improving privacy.
Many businesses are now using multi-signature contracts to manage funds, and many individual users are using the Lightning Network to save on-chain transaction fees, so Taproot is a much-needed solution that allows users to perform transactions on-chain without exposure How many participants and the fact that they use the smart contract.
As for performance, in Jameson Lopp's hardware wallet multi-signature contract test, Trezor performed well even under more extreme conditions. But as the number of signatures increases, the signature time becomes longer and longer, until it is completely unusable. Thanks to Schnorr signatures, this will no longer be a problem, as there is no longer a need to transmit preceding transactions. After Taproot is activated, even the most complex multi-signature schemes can be completed within minutes or even seconds.
Patch the Fee Setting Vulnerability with Taproot
Taproot has the added benefit of patching a long-standing, theoretical fee-related attack vector that we describe in detail in this firmware update blog post. In current SegWit and P2SH transactions, the fee is not expressed in an explicit metadata field, but inferred from the transaction data.
This creates a vulnerability: an attacker can trick users into paying an unusually large transaction fee, and the user may be unaware of the seemingly harmless operation. Of course, your Trezor will always show the exact transaction fee amount, but with Taproot, all entered amounts are explicitly included in the data that needs to be signed (currently this is not the case), thus protecting the use of less reliable Users of the fee algorithm; because, when an attacker tries to falsely report the amount entered to the wallet software, the signature generated by the wallet software will not be accepted by the network.
Taproot is the right step towards sustainable web growth
From an engineering standpoint, the benefits of Tarproot are enormous. More efficient and faster transactions will make the network easier to use and more secure, while also patching fee setting loopholes and improving privacy. The possible disadvantage is that Taproot will be used as another way to identify user behavior, but this disadvantage will only appear when Taproot's acceptance does not make progress. That shouldn't be the case, given Taproot's fanatical support on social networks.
As long as Taproot is used -- and for good reason -- it becomes more difficult to identify individual addresses. Now, users are waiting for the mining pool to pave the way and publicly express their support for Taproot before its November activation. Big mining pools need to take their users into account. And if they don't show their support, their reputations may suffer too. But eventually if there is another user-activated soft fork, their influence will be further reduced, and the upgrade will still be activated.
Original link:
Original link:
https://blog.trezor.io/how-taproot-will-benefit-hardware-wallets-fa43c0b6123e
