One of the most respected bitcoin developers, Gregory Maxwell returns to his "roots" cypherpunk with a series of new projects.

After nearly four years as a technical director of the high-tech bitcoin start-up Blockstream, he decided to devote himself exclusively to development, mainly because, as he explains in his letter of departure he accomplished what he wanted. startup, addressing what he thought was "significant underinvestment" in Bitcoin's technology by the time he joined.

This is largely done, he says, now that the bitcoin developer community is "much bigger and more active than it has ever been before," he writes. .

And although Maxwell announced his departure a few weeks ago, he has already been busy on several projects.

"For me, that means I can go back to working on the things that I find most exciting … without the overhead of staffing or managing the many non-bitcoin blockchain applications that are important to the business. Blockstream activity "Maxwell wrote.

First, an article that he co-wrote describing a major possible bitcoin change was published. A few days later, he released Taproot, an idea hailed by bitcoin developers to enhance the privacy of MAST, an idea that could bolster smart contract bitcoin capabilities.

"Taproot is terribly clever", as the creator of Lightning Network Tadge Dryja wrote on Twitter, adding that the idea seems simple in hindsight, but no one thought about it before Maxwell.

Press + root

Digging deeper, MAST is an idea to improve the functionality of smart bitcoin contracts that has been around for a while, and it is attracting more attention now than SegWit, a code change on which it depends, has been adopted in the code base. ]

Here is an idea of ​​a construction that MAST can allow.

A common use case of bitcoin is today the multi-signature M-of-N, which requires that parts can only be spent if multiple users, say two or three or two, approve the issue. A problem with this, however, is that if a person decides not to comply or lose his key, the money is unusable.

It is there that MAST intervenes. This allows to add additional conditions ( effectively? Think that it was possible to do it before but you do not remember it ). If multisignature funds are not spent for a while, say, then multiple signatures are no longer needed. After 10 years, for example, Alice can then spend the funds herself. [ Most of what MAST should be used. ]

This sounds specific, but there are real cases of use, exciting developers and the rest of the community in that it can extend Bitcoin's value proposition as much as it can. programmable money – while increasing the confidentiality and efficiency of the process.

In summary, Maxwell has found a way to improve the confidentiality of these transactions.

The problem with MAST as it stands, in Maxwell's eyes, is that every MAST transaction looks different from normal transactions. This is bad for privacy because, since bitcoin is an open book, outsiders can glean a little on the complexity of the financial transaction of a person they have no knowledge of.

"One point that emerges from the merkelized manuscripts is that we can make the cases of the use of the most original contracts as indistinguishable as possible from the most common and boring payments," he writes.

Taproot improves privacy in instances where multisignature is used. Multi-signature transactions, once set on the blockchain, look like normal transactions.

Taproot got his name because what happens under the hood is not exposed in this way.

"Taproot is the most effective to use for intelligent contract use that resembles the root system of plants like dandelion – a thick central path and small alternatives," Maxwell told CoinDesk.

Simple to add

The idea has drawn a little debate, as is common in the world of Bitcoin developers, who acts as "gatekeepers" of technology so that code changes that might harm users are blocked in the code.

For example, Blockstream co-founder Mark Friedenbach argued that developers should wait to see if further improvements could be supported before deploying MAST, while Chaincode developer Matt Corallo was not disappointed. # 39; agreement. to the ecosystem. "

If these disagreements are overcome, however, as far as the time and the moment when it could be deployed, it should not be too difficult to implement.

"Taproot is one of those ideas that are very simple to implement but very useful," Maxwell said in an email to CoinDesk.

As long as Taproot gets the approval of the developers and the community, Maxwell said that it could be integrated with "future signature system upgrades", such as global signatures, technologies, and more. development for a long time, with developers, especially Maxwell, viewing it as one of the next major improvements.

And with that, Maxwell exploited the root of his journey after Blockstream.

Image via the CoinDesk Events Team

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