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Schnorr signatures, a code change likely to be one of the biggest upcoming upgrades for Bitcoin, have now moved from a theoretical idea to a real code, thanks to the launch of Blockstream technology.
Announced Monday, Blockstream has added a technology known as "MuSig" to its cryptographic test library, allowing developers to tinker with the Schnorr signature scheme and possibly search for bugs.
The fact that the code is open to the public is an interesting step because, if Schnorr is added one day to bitcoin, the new digital signature scheme could add improvements in bitcoin privacy and scalability. As such, developers have been interested in the technology for some time.
Andrew Poelstra, Blockstream mathematician, wrote in the announcement:
"We are turning MuSig from an academic paper into a usable code, and this week we merged this code into secp256k1-zkp, a branch of secp256k1, the high-badurance crypto library used by Bitcoin Core."
This has been a theoretical improvement for years as cryptographers made mathematical progress last year to ensure system security. This will be the first time the code will be open for testing.
"To address these concerns, we have launched an initiative to design a new signature scheme and a significant hands-on engineering effort to implement it in a robust and anti-fragile manner," added Poelstra.
Most bitcoin developers think this update is positive and some have already started thinking about new technologies that could be built. For example, the developers have theorized how this could help to anonymize the flash transactions, considered a simpler and faster payment system on Bitcoin.
"While the bitcoin community is exploring the use of Schnorr signatures in bitcoin, we hope our code will eventually be merged into the secp256k1 upstream library used by bitcoin core and many other projects," added Poelstra.
To this end, it invites developers to play with the code available on GitHub and to give its opinion.
Andrew Poelstra image via CoinDesk
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