Exploring Bitcoin With Taproot: Aaron van Wirdum, Andrew Poelstra, Adam Gibson & Chris Belcher

Exploring Bitcoin With Taproot, featuring Aaron van Wirdum of Bitcoin Magazine, Andrew Poelstra of Blockstream and Adam Gibson and Chris Belcher of JoinMarket.

If you've paid attention to Bitcoin on the protocol level recently, you've likely heard of Taproot. It was first proposed by Bitcoin Core contributor Gregory Maxwell as a solution to expand Bitcoin's smart contract flexibility and potentially offer more privacy in the process. Much of Bitcoin's technical community supports Taproot as a protocol upgrade, so you might be asking yourself: What will Bitcoin look like once it's activated?

To answer that question and cover more of the technical specifics around Taproot, Bitcoin Magazine hosts this live panel featuring some of the space's most insightful contributors. Moderated by Bitcoin Magazine Technical Editor Aaron van Wirdum (@AaronvanW), panelists include Andrew Poelstra of Blockstream and Adam Gibson and Chris Belcher (@chris_belcher_) of JoinMarket.

Timestamps:
0:00 intro and commercials.
0:02:54 Guest introductions
0:05:22 Taproot code merged into Bitcoin Core and why that matters even without a defined activation plan
0:09:58 Explanation of what Schnorr is, how it compares to ECDSA, and whether Schnorr/Taproot affects Bitcoin's security guarantees
0:18:50 Outlining technical and privacy improvements enabled by Schnorr/Taproot
0:25:29 Explanation of how Taproot works technically and an overview of its key benefits
0:33:52 Discussing how Schnorr/Taproot affects Bitcoin multisig construction/computation and the complexities of practical implementation
0:54:43 Explaining cross-input signature aggregation in the context of CoinJoin and why it is not included in the Taproot upgrade
1:01:59 Additional functionality enabled by Taproot and its impact on the Bitcoin security model
1:12:31 Debating Taproot activation strategies and timelines
1:28:41 Last words

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