There are many developments that are currently being performed to improve Bitcoin’s performance in the space. One of the things that developers are thinking about is implementing privacy features on the Bitcoin (BTC) network.

Nowadays, Bitcoin users can be linked to specific addresses and movements, and transactions can also be seen as they take place on the blockchain.

What Are Graftroots?

One of the improvements that Bitcoin developers are trying to design is related to Schnorr signatures. This is a technology that unlocks other improvements such as Taproot and also Graftroot.

Schnorr signatures couldn’t be implemented on the Bitcoin network because it was patented until February 2008. This implementation predates Bitcoin’s current signature algorithm called Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA).

Due to the fact that it was necessary to pay for this patent, it didn’t apply to Bitcoin’s globally accessible network. Thus, DSA was invented to replace these Schnorr signatures. Schnorr aggregates signatures.

That means that if there are a series of transactions and a user has a series of public keys that can be used to sign these transactions, it is possible to add all the public keys and all the transactions together and sign the sum of transactions with the sum of keys in a single signature.

Moreover, Schnorr provides signers with the possibility to aggregate their signatures. This is very useful when they have a multi-sig transaction and there are 5 individuals that have to sign off this transaction. With Schnorr transactions, it is possible to hide that these transactions were signed by several individuals rather than by just one person.

It is also possible to implement timelock/multi-sig conditions. This could have applied to the cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, where the owner died and did not leave any information about the funds stored in their wallets.

What Is Graftroot?

Taproot comes with a smart contract that makes transactions much bigger than usual, and it is not possible to fix that issue with Taproot.

Greg Maxwell, the co-creator of Taproot, commented about it:

“Taproot suffers from a limitation that it only natively provides for one alternative. Trees or cascades of taproots can be done, but they have less privacy and efficiency than just a single level. E.g. a tree commitment has overhead that grows with the log of the number of alternatives.”

MAST technology (Merkelized Abstract Syntax Trees) could be achieved with Graftroot. MAST is a technology that obfuscates the conditions of a specific transaction. With Graftroot it is possible to add more ways to spend coins without informing this to the blockchain. After spending, the script is revealed and verified on the blockchain.

With Schnorr it is possible to enable multisig compressed into a single pubkey. With Graftroot, the multisig participants can sign the scripts they like to use in their stead. Thus, participants sign alternative scripts and store the threshold signature for each condition.

That means that Graftroot is an amalgamation of its Schnorr/Taproot/MAST roots that allow users to spend Bitcoin using smart contracts and everything will be showcased as a single transaction.

However, there is a downside for Graftroot transactions. Participants have to communicate about signing alternative scripts before spending the BTC. If users find it complicated to make a Bitcoin transaction nowadays, with this implementation, things could get more complicated than before.

There is an intention of implementing a new package of upgrades, including Taproot, Graftroot and signature aggregation.

Developers are trying to introduce these updates as soon as possible. Since these technologies complement each other in a very good way, it will be possible for users to receive and get maximum privacy as possible. If this is implemented at once, it will be impossible to distinguish Schnorr/Taproot/Graftroot transactions from regular ones.

It is worth mentioning that these implementations do not need a hard fork, everything can be performed via a soft fork. This can be implemented in a similar way as Segregated Witness (SegWit) was implemented in the past.

These are just some of the implementations that developers are trying to include into Bitcoin to make it a more private currency.

Litecoin (LTC), one of the most popular digital assets in the market, is also working in order to enhance its privacy features by including Confidential Transactions or work with Mimblewimble. This network enhancement can also be performed via a soft fork rather than with a hard fork.