Bitcoin Technology Breakthrough: MAST, Taproot, and Schnorr Signatures Lead Development in 2020

Bitcoin has been around for 11 years since its inception, and its technology has been constantly evolving. The year 2020 will be an important year for the development of Bitcoin technology. The emergence of new technologies such as MAST, Taproot, and Schnorr signatures will further enhance the functionality of Bitcoin, focusing not just on short-term benefits.

2020 Bitcoin Technology Outlook

In recent years, the number of high-level developers for the Bitcoin core protocol has decreased, raising some concerns within the community. However, if we focus on technological developments beyond price, we will find that many practical and interesting new features are gradually being introduced, especially in the past few years. In 2020, the Bitcoin blockchain is expected to introduce more anticipated new characteristics.

For example, the Miniscript released in 2019 is a new Bitcoin script compiler that can significantly enhance the programmability of the Bitcoin blockchain without compromising security. In addition, there are several important technical proposals worth following:

1. Schnorr Signature: A brand new signature scheme
2. MAST: An innovative Merkle tree data structure
3. Taproot: A method that allows all participants to reach consensus on the results and sign settlement transactions.

The combination of these three technologies will greatly enhance Bitcoin's fungibility and privacy protection capabilities. Let's take a closer look at their features.

MAST

MAST stands for Merkle Abstract Syntax Tree, which allows the use of different scripts linked to the same Merkle tree to lock Bitcoin. This structure makes it extremely difficult to tamper with transactions, as any change to a node will result in a change to the entire tree structure, ultimately affecting the root node.

MAST is essentially a combination of P2SH (Pay to Script Hash) with Merkle tree technology. It allows a group of Bitcoins to be linked to multiple scripts with different unlocking conditions. This approach expands the flexibility of Bitcoin smart contracts, improves scalability, and enhances user privacy.

Taproot

Taproot introduces smart contract-like functionality to the Bitcoin network, allowing users to add complex logic to simple payment or transaction scripts. It works in conjunction with P2SH, enabling scripts to be split into separate sets of statements that only display the parts that are actually used.

This technology enhances the privacy and scalability of transactions, as it only needs to display the range of logs for the branches without requiring additional storage. Moreover, Taproot makes all transactions appear uniform in blockchain explorers, making them difficult to distinguish, which is a significant advancement for Bitcoin's privacy protection.

Taproot can also consolidate multiple signature steps into a single signature, improving the efficiency of Schnorr signatures. Developers say that Taproot can enable MAST and Schnorr signatures to work together more effectively.

Schnorr signature

Schnorr signatures were invented by German cryptographer Claus-Peter Schnorr around 1980. This signature scheme is particularly suitable for Bitcoin, as it can aggregate multiple signatures into a single aggregate signature, greatly simplifying the signing process.

Compared to multi-signatures, each signer in a Schnorr signature has their own message, rather than sharing the same message. During verification, Schnorr signatures do not leak any input information, making the transaction output appear as just a regular address to outsiders.

Compared to traditional ECDSA signature technology, Schnorr signatures are easier to verify while ensuring higher correctness, flexibility, and stability.

Although the price of Bitcoin fluctuates from time to time, its technological development has never stopped. We should follow the long-term development of Bitcoin, not just the short-term price changes. As the slogan says: "Everything is possible". The future of Bitcoin is full of infinite possibilities.