Bitcoin: potential protocol developments for 2020

@lesrieux

11 years after the creation of the first block, the Bitcoin network has evolved drastically. Although no updates have been implemented since SegWit in August 2017, 2020 may well be the year of change. Many soft forks are currently in development, and may well be deployed in the year 2020, provided they get enough support from the community.

Signatures of Schnorr and Taproot
Schnorr's signatures are known in the field of cryptography to be one of the best types of signatures. Applied to Bitcoin, such signatures would allow a reduction in the size of transactions. In addition, many of these signatures can be easily aggregated into a single, de facto enhanced confidentiality solutions such as Coinjoin.

Many developers are working on adding Schnorr signatures to Bitcoin : among them are Pieter Wuille and Jonas Nick, working at Blockstream, and Anthony Towns, an employee of Xapo.

However, our three protagonists do not wish to stop at the signatures of Schnorr and propose the simultaneous addition of Schnorr as well as two other improvements known as MAST and Taproot. These enhancements respectively add complex conditions to a transaction while reducing its size and increasing confidentiality.

The combination of these three improvements within a single soft fork is necessary for Peter Wuille :

"Separating them into independent proposals would reduce efficiency and Privacy gains and make it difficult to analyze their interactions. It seems preferable to focus on one objective at a time and combine interactive technologies to achieve them. "Pieter Wuille.

OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY

The OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY code is an enhancement proposed by Bitcoin Core developer Jeremy Rubin. The objective of this soft fork is to facilitate transactions in times of congestion or sharp increase in charges on the Bitcoin network.

This functionality would allow transactions to be split into two separate transactions :

The "sent" half, including transaction entries (sender data).
The “received " half, including the outputs of the transaction (recipient data).
At the time of the transaction, both halves are broadcast on the network. The first half containing the information of the transmitter is distributed with more cost than the second so that it is validated more quickly. The fact that the second half takes longer to be validated is not a problem, as it is the validation of the first half that guarantees the final receipt of funds.

The drivechains

You've probably heard of sidechains, those Bitcoin blockchains that move BTC from one chain to another. In the case of these chains, security is provided by influential companies in the industry, such as the sidechain Liquid, set up by Blockstream.

The drivechains have everything in common with the sidechains, except for the way they are secured. The latter would be secured by the Bitcoin blockchain miners. Thus, the hash power deployed on the Bitcoin network would also protect these drivers.

This proposal was made by developers Paul Sztorc and encryption in the form of two soft forks, called Hashrate Crooks and Blind Merged Mining.

For more details on the various upgrade proposals, see the article by @bitcoin.bot on the subject.

For those who have followed the story of the Bitcoin forks, in many cases the organization and realization of a soft fork is long and perilous. All the improvements we have seen above are at an advanced stage of development, however, they will not necessarily be approved by the community and implemented; only the year 2020 will tell us.

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