An Introduction Guide on Bitcoin TAPROOT

After analyzing the BIP of Schnorr digital signatures, the time has come to better understand how the BIP Taproot works and why it is so interesting for Bitcoin’s privacy

After years of waiting and many tests, the fateful update of the Bitcoin protocol has finally arrived, which will bring the BIPs Schnorr and Taproot within it. While the Schnorr signatures have already been explored in the last article, Taproot needs a more detailed explanation to understand what improvements it brings to the Bitcoin Core code.

The starting point: MAST

Bitcoin MAST is the starting point for this improvement proposal, which together with Schnorr digital signatures intend to improve the privacy of transactions. Basically, Bitcoin transactions work by blocking Bitcoins (or UTXOs containing BTC) within scripts, that is, spending conditions, written with the Script language. The set of scripts and the way they are concatenated and stacked together is called MAST (Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree).