What Are Schnorr Signatures?
Schnorr signatures are a type of digital signature scheme that Bitcoin adopted with the Taproot upgrade. They offer key advantages over the original ECDSA signatures: signature aggregation, batch verification, and improved privacy for complex scripts.
Mathematical Elegance
Schnorr signatures have provable security properties and a simpler mathematical structure than ECDSA. Their linearity enables powerful features like key and signature aggregation that were difficult or impossible with Bitcoin's original signature scheme.
Key Advantages
Signature Aggregation
Multiple signatures can be combined into a single signature, significantly reducing transaction size for multi-signature setups. A 3-of-3 multisig looks identical to a single-signature transaction on the blockchain.
Efficiency & Privacy
Smaller signatures mean lower fees. Additionally, by making complex scripts indistinguishable from simple payments, Schnorr signatures greatly enhance privacy while improving efficiency.
Schnorr signatures were enabled through Taproot in November 2021. They're fundamental to modern Bitcoin features like silent payments and advanced Miniscript constructions, representing a significant improvement in Bitcoin's cryptographic toolkit.
Quick Facts
- •Enabled by Taproot upgrade in 2021
- •More efficient than ECDSA
- •Enables signature aggregation
- •Improves privacy and scalability