Bitcoin Core: Bitcoin Core 0.21.1 released with Taproot activation code

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2021/05/01/release-0.21.1/

by alwillis • 5 years ago

150 249 5 years ago

xiphias2• 5 years ago

https://taproot.watch already shows Taproot activations by blocks and miners.

sp3324• 5 years ago

Am I misreading this or does it say that Taproot will not be activated? It needed 90% of the blocks and already 11% have not signaled.

ComputerGuru3• 5 years ago

This cycle. This was just released, so it’ll take a while to get deliberate/representative numbers.

pstrateman2• 5 years ago

Not within this activation window.

But maybe the next one.

sp3324• 5 years ago

Oh, there's a certificate issue. I was wondering why Smart Screen was giving me a hard time about the download even though I was... fairly sure it was legit.

seibelj• 5 years ago

Taproot is essential as it will enable “scriptless scripts” which means transactions can accomplish complex code without appearing any different from normal transactions. Use cases include better mixers, cross-chain atomic swaps, and more efficient transactions.

snypher• 5 years ago

transactions can accomplish complex code without appearing any different from normal transactions

What could go wrong I guess. Are there distinct advantages to this?

doomroot• 5 years ago

Yes, it helps on chain privacy. It’s currently really easy to spot a lightning network channel funding transaction. In the future these will all look like normal transactions.

This softfork also provides the necessary tools to make pay-join economically advantageous.

ur-whale9• 5 years ago

Are there distinct advantages to this?

It improves fungibility (if that's even a word).

rocqua9• 5 years ago

Note that, once the transaction is spent, it will be clear that it was a script spend, and some of the script will also be revealed.

runeks3• 5 years ago

[…] some of the script will also be revealed.

nullc seems to be saying that revealing (part of) the script isn’t necessary in case of cooperation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27023391

Am I misunderstanding you or nullc?

ufo• 5 years ago

What is this Taproot about?

anonporridge2• 5 years ago

https://medium.com/interdax/what-is-taproot-and-how-will-it-...

One of the big improvements is that multi-signature transactions, where both Alice and Bob have to sign to spend some money, used to require adding N signatures (number of signers) to the block chain to have a valid transaction. So it improves efficiency and should allow squeezing more transactions, but it also improves privacy, because there's no way to tell if how many parties are involved in the transaction.

Merkelised Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST) are the other big feature that allows for more complex scripting to also be represented in a compressed and obfuscated way (example in the link).

tribler• 5 years ago

Taproot with MAST enables a DAO on Bitcoin.

See the full implementation here by Delft University of Technology scientists and students. [1] Security needs work, functionality works. (disclaimer, I'm the responsibile professor)

[1] https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-superapp#luxury-commun...

ur-whale9• 5 years ago

What is this Taproot about?

If accepted by the miners, Bitcoin will a bunch of low-level upgrades:

    - more compact signatures (decrease blockchain size)

    - paves the way to smart contract

    - improve transaction privacy

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/taproot-coming-what-it...

nullc38• 5 years ago

In Bitcoin every coin has a list of programmatic conditions attached to it that set the rules for spending the code.

Usually the rule is just "provide a digital signature with key X", or some threshold of keys. Though they can be more much complicated, and even simple scripts can have powerful applications (e.g. https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/02/26/zero-knowledge-conting... )

The flexibility is nice but there are some gotchas-- Your rules are included in the transaction, storing and transmitting expends system resources, costs you fees, distinguishes your transactions from other users, and in doing so discloses information about your business practices.

Taproot addresses this by doing some relatively simple elliptic curve crypto magic to effectively hide the conditions inside a public key without impairing it or making it larger. Then, if the parties transacting cooperate they can keep their fancy conditions private and just sign using a single jointly controlled key. If the parties don't cooperate some of the conditions may need to be exposed, but only the absolute minimum to show the transaction is allowable. Cooperation is likely however, because non-cooperating won't create a benefit.

The effect is that instead of being limited to a few thousand bytes of operations for the rules governing your coin, you could have gigabytes of rules, and yet never expose them (and burn network resources and your privacy) -- or if you do need to to expose some of them, you only need to show a small amount. ... and as a bonus have your transactions look just like a really boring maximally simple wallet's transactions.

There are also some small efficiency gains: somewhat smaller signatures and making batch signature validation possible.

It's a little difficult to estimate the impact this improvement will have: Most users only use relatively simple rules, and as a result they will just become a little more private and a little more efficient. But if taproot was marketed like most altcoins are the headline would be "Taproot increases script expressiveness FORTY ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE while reducing resource usage!", because-- indeed-- you could make a script that was 1.3e41 times larger than the current rules allow if only you had a computer powerful enough to handle such data locally. :P So for common uses it's a small to moderate efficiency and privacy improvement, but it could enable some new and interesting applications.

... and you might not ever know about some application that benefited from it, because unless you're a party to its transactions there may be nothing identifying published about them. :) Not the best for marketing, but better for human rights.

ragebol• 5 years ago

Thanks, that was very clear.

Question though: why is it called Taproot?

runeks3• 5 years ago

The effect is that instead of being limited to a few thousand bytes of operations for the rules governing your coin, you could have gigabytes of rules, and yet never expose them (and burn network resources and your privacy) -- or if you do need to to expose some of them, you only need to show a small amount. ... and as a bonus have your transactions look just like a really boring maximally simple wallet's transactions.

If I have e.g. a 1GB script, how much of it will I need to reveal if my counterparty doesn’t cooperate?

For example, is it realistic to have 1GB of script and only needing to reveal, say, 1KB in case the other party doesn’t cooperate?

anonymouse0084• 5 years ago

Wow - this feels very anti-ETH contract. I've seen so many copypasta-coins that I don't think would exist in this release.

Semi-off topic: In another comment you said you're no longer developing BTC, what on earth could be more appealing right now?

johnyzee• 5 years ago

I follow bitcoin and have read plenty of descriptions of taproot, but this was the best one so far.

ur-whale9• 5 years ago

Taproot, aside from the upgrade itself, is very interesting because it will be a test of Bitcoin's upgrade-ability.

Last effort to improve Bitcoin (Segwit) was basically a giant shitshow.

Let's hope the ecosystem has matured and this one will be a little more orderly.

BelenusMordred3• 5 years ago

Taproot is far less controversial.

ftlio2• 5 years ago

What was controversial about segwit outside of a large commercial interest (Bitmain) losing the ability to leverage a patented algorithm that effectively increased their ASIC productivity? I always thought that was what drove most of the drama and Bitcoin Cash, a place where they could continue to arbitrage that mining boost, to come about.

rawtxapp6• 5 years ago

Yep, even though pretty much everyone agrees taproot is a positive change, the most controversial part so far was on agreeing how to activate it, this activation process is actually pretty conservative and gives enough time/participation. Hopefully, it lands nicely and future improvements will be more smooth as well.

nodja3• 5 years ago

Let's not kid ourselves. The segwit/2MB nonsense basically drove all developers away that aren't blockstream. There's no one left in bitcoin core that cares enough to go against blockstream unless it affects their bottom-line i.e. miners.

This upgrade will boil down to "will mining pools bother to upgrade their nodes"?

nullc38• 5 years ago

That is simply untrue. I think there is only one regular contributor to Bitcoin that is affiliated with blockstream, and meanwhile you can't name one contributor who left.

[Perhaps you think you'd name Gavin Andresen? but he had stopped contributing years before blockstream even existed. ... and left the space entirely after an infamous incident where he vocally endorsed a pretty obvious scammer.]

crazypython5• 5 years ago

A Bitcoin full node only takes 5GB of disk space to run, and 256MB of memory.

[0] https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/Bitcoin.org/pull/3624/fil...

[1] https://bitcoin.org/en/full-node

rawtxapp6• 5 years ago

In hindsight, I think most would agree it was a good idea to force the smarter scaling solutions rather than brute-force blocksize scaling (which sooner or later would have hit a ceiling anyways).

wmf6• 5 years ago

The "smarter" scaling solutions still aren't here after years of waiting, fees are hitting all-time highs, and other chains can do >4,000 TPS on layer 1. So no, small blocks weren't and aren't a good idea.

dannyw• 5 years ago

It's not black and white. Would 2MB blocks (and hence 10GB of disk space) be a worthy trade off?

The problem I see is bitcoin devs refusing to be pragmatic. Segwit is just an accounting trick.

lawn• 5 years ago

In hindsight it should be obvious that these "smarter" scaling solutions have utterly failed to keep Bitcoin functioning as peer-to-peer electronic cash, like the original intention was.

JohnJamesRambo• 5 years ago

Were we getting low on disk space?

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hard_drive_capacit...

It’s perverse you are proud of that and chose a tiny hard drive size over becoming actually useful and doing more than seven transactions per second. Time marches on, technology improves, but Bitcoin is proud they can run a node on a computer from 1995.

rawtxapp6• 5 years ago

Decentralization/trustless aspect of Bitcoin is the utmost important thing, without those, there's no need for it, we can just use fiat.

Once you've accepted that premise, the next question is how do you achieve the most decentralization? The answer is by having the most nodes. How do you get people to run nodes? Make it super cheap to run. It's simple really, people are not paid to run nodes (miners != nodes). It's not about storage space, you also have to consider network latency and propagating those blocks across a large adversarial network.

wereHamster3• 5 years ago

Wait what? I thought a full node needed 200GB+… Since when are the requirements so low?

msgilligan• 5 years ago

“ It is possible to configure your node to to run in pruned mode in order to reduce storage requirements. This can reduce the disk usage from over 350GB to around 7GB.”

From [1] in the parent.

crazypython5• 5 years ago

You only need to store the most recent blocks for security to verify new blocks. 5GB– the minimum Bitcoin Knots, a variant of Bitcoin Core, allows 3 days of blocks. A chain rewrite/51% attack is unlikely to last 3 days because of the probabilistic grantees.

alwillis3• 5 years ago

Keep in mind most lightning implementations require a full node to function properly.

weasel_words• 5 years ago

This is factually incorrect. And, this sort of misinformation is one of the reasons people don't like the crypto-hype.

Perhaps a pruned node can get somewhere in the area of sub-10G, but a "full node" is actually at around 328G: https://www.statista.com/statistics/647523/worldwide-bitcoin...

crazypython5• 5 years ago

A pruned node is a full node. A full node is any node that is fully validating. A pruned node is fully validating;

"Full nodes download every block and transaction and check them against Bitcoin's consensus rules." (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Full_node#Archival_Nodes)

Pruned nodes do just that.

The blockchain data structure means that once verified, you don't need to store old blocks. You only need the most recent blocks to verify new ones.

The nodes you're talking about, that store the entire blockchain, is called an archival node.

Anyway, encouraging people to install full nodes, pruned or not– which enforces the rules– improves Bitcoin's decentralization.[0]

[0] https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/features/validation

JohnTHaller• 5 years ago

The current Bitcoin Core on Windows stores 366GB of data on your local drive excluding the app files. Source: Looking at the folders on my PC right now.

crazypython5• 5 years ago

How does Bitcoin "enforce new rules" without creating a hard fork?

sp3324• 5 years ago

It is a soft fork. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/bip-8-bip-9-or-modern-... "The nice thing about adding or tightening rules is that anything that an upgraded node considers valid, a non-upgraded node considers valid, too."

The signalling mechanism is a way for the miners to vote ahead of time whether they will follow to the new fork or not. If more than 10% of the hash power of the network does not signal that it will follow, then the fork is called off and won't happen.

nullc38• 5 years ago

The same was a sculptor extracts a bust from a block of raw marble -- subtractive geometry.

Bitcoin's rules specify what isn't allowed and violating that breaks compatibility, but the system can become more restrictive without becoming incompatible.

Huge chunks of the space of possible inputs was set aside for futures use by allowing them in blocks without imposing any structure (while disallowing them for loose transactions so nodes won't inadvertently relay transactions which are invalid due to rules they don't understand).

In that sense all future features are already complete latent inside the system and to make them useful the community need only chip away at all the permitted inputs which aren't compatible with the desired new functionality. :)

rocqua9• 5 years ago

The idea is that, under the old version, the transactions enforcing new rules look like "anyone can spend this transaction". Hence, old clients still accept these transactions, they just don't verify them. The new nodes do verify those transactions, which prevents unauthorized transactions from reaching the blockchain, as long as there are enough new nodes.

sp3324• 5 years ago

I think the confusion is that the old nodes might create new chains that the new nodes will not follow. But with >90% of the hash power of the network on one side, the old-style blocks will be orphaned pretty quickly. And all clients will follow the longest chain they consider legitimate, so old-style blocks will just be ignored after they are orphaned.

TekMol9• 5 years ago

Every time a chain hardforks like this, they basically create a new currency and everyone starts calling the new currency "Bitcoin", "Ethereum" etc. While in theory it is not.

What would happen if a Bitcoin fund like Grayscale would say that their customers are only entitled to the "original" Bitcoins in the fund. So investors would be left with pretty much worthless stuff?

What would happen if they don't, but the original coins keep being traded at say 10% of the value of the new ones. Who pockets those 10%?

WanderPanda2• 5 years ago

I don’t get why this is downvoted. It is technically true and raises an interesting legal issue.

Edit: Isn’t this also what happened on some exchanges with the previous big forks?

TekMol9• 5 years ago

I think this is a systematic issue with Hacker News, Reddit etc.

While low quality comments are easy to spot, low quality votes are not.

I often think HN should have the requirement to explain a downvote. I would think that downvotes like these have low quality explanations like "Shut up, idiot!". So these low quality votes could be dealt with and the voters future votes could be discounted.

ComputerGuru3• 5 years ago

I didn’t downvote, but I think the comment has a factually inaccurate premise: this isn’t a hard fork.

nullc38• 5 years ago

It's being downvoted because it's inapplicable to this situation... there isn't any hardfork here. The change is fully compatible.

The question he's trying to bring up is an interesting one, but this is the wrong thread to bring it up on.

On this subject-- Checkout Archer v. Coinbase, where coinbase kept a large amount of a users forked coins and prevailed in court.

jamesgreenleaf• 5 years ago

I would guess that Grayscale and others have thought of that, and have written it into their contracts with customers. I'd also bet they're the ones who pocket the proceeds from any forks.

wmf6• 5 years ago

I decided to look this up. "If a permanent fork, similar to Ethereum, were to occur to bitcoin, the Trust would hold equal amounts of the original and the new bitcoin as a result. In consultation with the Index Provider, the Sponsor would select a Bitcoin Network (and therefore a single version of bitcoin). The Sponsor would simultaneously isolate the bitcoin on the Bitcoin Network that it did not select to segregate it from the Trust’s Bitcoin Holdings. The Sponsor’s intention would be to distribute to its Shareholders the bitcoin on the Bitcoin Network that it did not select. Therefore, the Trust would only hold one version of bitcoin. It is uncertain whether the value of the distribution of the bitcoin on the Bitcoin Network that the Sponsor did not select would equal the change in the value of the Shares. Consequently, a permanent fork could materially and adversely affect the value of the Shares." Pretty loose policy. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1588489/000119312517...

wmf6• 5 years ago

The ETC/ETH split was an actual fork resulting in two chains, but Segwit and Taproot don't cause chain splits so it's not a similar situation.

If somebody like Grayscale decided to outright scam their own investors (why?) there are a hundred excuses they could invent to justify it; they don't need to blame a protocol upgrade.

Segwit was activated years ago. There were some conspiracy theories about Segwit UTXOs being worth less than legacy UTXOs but AFAIK they were totally unfounded. So far Bitcoin is Bitcoin and I don't see any reason why that would change.

ur-whale9• 5 years ago

Every time a chain hardforks

I may be mistaken, but I don't think taproot is a hard fork.

Animats2• 5 years ago

They're telling you to use the unsigned executable because they screwed up renewing their signing certificate. Bad excuse. Very bad security practice for a Bitcoin wallet. They do offer SHA-256 hashes for the executables, so people can check by hand, but the download and the hashed check come from the same site. If someone can spoof the download site, they can Make Money Fast.

Somewhere, someone is probably working out a way to exploit this right now.

pstrateman2• 5 years ago

The SHA-256 hashes are gpg signed with the key at https://bitcoin.org/laanwj-releases.asc

Nobody actually checks the executable signatures, they're buried in the file properties.

garmaine5• 5 years ago

Everyone on macOS and Windows checks the executable signatures automatically on first run.

h_anna_h5• 5 years ago

Signing the hashes instead of the executable leaves you open to collision attacks.

nullc38• 5 years ago

First, the releases are signed-- just not with the windows code signing infrastructure.

For windows the CA improperly revoked the certificate in response to a renewal request and back dated the revocation and are refusing to issue a new certificate (my understanding and that the CA now believes open source collaborations aren't eligible for code signing certs, or some such nonsense... it's being worked out)

The releases are still PGP signed by an official project key which has been in use for many years and is cross signed by many parties-- just as they have the last decade--, as well as by another 16 parties that independent reproduced the binaries through the deterministic build process: https://github.com/bitcoin-core/gitian.sigs/tree/master/0.21... which has also been used for the last ten years. Anyone who already has an older faithful copy has the scripts to automatically download and verify the other signatures.

By comparison, the windows code signing provides relatively little security assurance. Not too dissimilar from the HTTPS used on the download site. It, like the https, does have the advantage that it is widely checked while many users don't bother checking the actual release signatures. It's useful to have for sure, but it's not the only protection and, unfortunately, it exist only at the whim of a third party that isn't accountable to the users of Bitcoin. But if someone can spoof the download site the executable signing won't do much to stop them from causing problems.

ddtaylor3• 5 years ago

I think the problem here is that it's training end-users to step outside of the normal security practices and normalizing that behavior. In the same way that most reputable companies would tell you "We'll never ask you for your password" and over time that has been well relegated to scammer-only territory. What if one day a company said "Hey, we're just gonna ask for your password this one time, but it's okay" - it mostly defeats the entire purpose of the protection scheme if users can easily be duped into not following it.

Black1015• 5 years ago

They do offer SHA-256 hashes for the executables, so people can check by hand

I never understood how this is useful... If someone would replace the executables, wouldn't they also replace the SHA-256 hashes that you are getting from the same source?

Aachen3• 5 years ago

Mirrors. Remember when you were asked to pick a mirror? And they'd invariably use plain http. And CDNs are still common, whereas the hash sum comes from the https main site.

At least that was the original point. These days you usually just host stuff yourself (on your domain or someone you pay, like a paid CDN) rather than having people mirror stuff independently. And it's all https, so it's mostly moot like you say, but old habits seem to die hard though it's already far less common than in the past.

Whenever you still see one, look at where the download really comes from. Often it's third party whereas the hash is first party. If not, then it's probably just a page with old habits.

nullc38• 5 years ago

The practice of checkums/hashes with files really stems back to FTP and even less reliable transfer mechanisms would randomly corrupt your data. They also let you use a less trustworthy source, while you get just the hashes from a slow but more trustworthy source.

In Bitcoin's case what is actually provided is a PGP signature. The relevant key isn't provided along with the download files for the reason you mention. Though there are instructions on obtaining and validating the key on the download site. ... and if you're depending on reading those instructions' they're vulnerable to substitution.

xorcist3• 5 years ago

It would indeed offer no security if the hashes weren't signed (which they are).

The question is rather why distribute a separate file with hashes and their signatures, rather than just the signatures themselves, seeing how all useful cryptographic signatures contains the hash anyway?

I suspect the answer is that it is somehow more convenient for the build and release process to distribute one file with all hashes, rather than lots of individual signatures for each artifact. The release process is quite elaborate with several parties independently reproducing that exact build. But someone would have to correct me on that.

That's probably also why they don't consider the broken Windows certificate important enough to stall the release. Relying on a single CA does not provide them with the type of security they are looking for.

jnwatson• 5 years ago

The CircleCI hack was (eventually) caught because the hash of the downloaded file no longer matched.

If the checksum is hosted in a different place than the file, it requires an attacker to compromise two separate systems.

In the typical system, though, the hash sitting next to the file isn't particularly useful.

h_anna_h5• 5 years ago

but the download and the hashed check come from the same site. If someone can spoof the download site

Someone should tell the nixos devs that. Not being able to verify the authenticity of something as important as your OS does not seem very safe.

nullc38• 5 years ago

If nixos is doing that they're not alone. Fedora is in essentially the same camp unless it changed in the latest release: It's pgp signed but with a totally new key with every release and that pgp key isn't signed by anything else, and the only way to verify it is ... to download it from the same place you got your iso from.

A number of years back openssl changed their pgp key and for a month didn't publish it anywhere. AFAICT I was the first person to complain about it-- which also suggests that all the distros that had already shipped the update hadn't checked it.

encryptluks2• 5 years ago

Doesn't Algorand and Ethereum solve these issues already? The transaction fees on Bitcoin essentially just make it a savings account. Does Bitcoin actually have potential for smart contracts?

user-the-name7• 5 years ago

Bitcoin currently consumes over 0.1% of the entire energy of the planet.

Bitcoin currently emits as much carbon as the entire country of Sweden.

Bitcoin currently creates 10000 tons of electronic waste and associated pollution a year.

Bitcoin is currently enabling a massive epidemic of ransomware, which is not only crippling businesses but also critically important societal services.

At this point, it is neither ethical nor moral to use bitcoin, or do anything that helps it thrive.

Bitcoin is a crime against humanity, and must be destroyed as soon as possible.

gaara872• 5 years ago

What societal services are being crippled by ransomware that's so called enabled by Bitcoin?

Please understand there's a difference between what the technology provides and what it's being used for. Malicious people using the technology is true of many many technologies. I keep getting phishing calls every other day to give my SSN, does that mean the social security program should be canceled for this very reason?

dane-pgp2• 5 years ago

I keep getting phishing calls every other day to give my SSN, does that mean the social security program should be canceled for this very reason?

No, but according to some people's logic it's a reason to ban telephone calls.

user-the-name7• 5 years ago

What societal services are being crippled by ransomware that's so called enabled by Bitcoin?

https://threatpost.com/ransomware-hits-hospitals-hardest/162...

Please understand there's a difference between what the technology provides and what it's being used for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

argvargc3• 5 years ago

Replace "bitcoin" with "the panicked response to COVID", inflate the numbers significantly, and you may be onto something.

user-the-name7• 5 years ago

Garbage.

keymone17• 5 years ago

Bitcoin currently consumes over 0.1% of the entire energy of the planet

bitcoin doesn't consume any energy at all, you have a severe misunderstanding of what PoW is and how it works.

user-the-name7• 5 years ago

I do not. You seem to have a severe case of trying to rationalise incredible destructive waste with pointless semantic arguments. I would recommend you stop that, and open your eyes to reality, where Bitcoin is causing massive, massive harm to society and you are helping.

yjftsjthsd-h3• 5 years ago

I was rather under the impression that using btc requires mining btc which uses a rather lot of energy. What am I missing?

JoeAltmaier• 5 years ago

That's deliberately misleading. It's impossible to mine bitcoin without burning up cpu time which means energy. And every year it gets harder, by design (to control the volume of new btc).

But of course you know that. I wonder why the trollish comments.

baobabKoodaa• 5 years ago

You can play word games all day long, but the fact remains: without blockchains the world would use considerably less energy. Whether you call that energy usage "consumption" or "requirement" or what not is just pedantic nitpicking.

leishman• 5 years ago

For those who don’t know what Taproot is: https://river.com/learn/what-is-taproot/

tinus_hn3• 5 years ago

I guess the information was there somewhere but I still don’t understand what it is. This is not clear enough.

crypot• 5 years ago

Wow, the future is here. In just 12 short years we made it to version 0.21.

At this point bitcoin is like an economic black hole. Most technology allows us to do more with less. So far, bitcoin doesn't follow that pattern. The higher the price, the more resources are needed to secure the network.

nullc38• 5 years ago

Wow, the future is here. In just 12 short years we made it to version 0.21.

I guess the next major release is going to blow your mind.

garmaine5• 5 years ago

There’s a new release every six months regardless.

Bitcoin Core: Bitcoin Core 0.21.1 released with Taproot activation code

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