bitcoin-dev

Lamport scheme (not signature) to economize on L1

Lamport scheme (not signature) to economize on L1

Original Postby David A. Harding

Posted on: January 1, 2024 18:57 UTC

The email from Dave raises a critical inquiry about the necessity of implementing a soft or hard fork to introduce a proposed change in Bitcoin's transaction handling.

He underscores that such a proposal would demand extensive peer review and acceptance among users, thus questioning the tangible benefits of the modification. The core advantage Dave perceives is the potential reduction in transaction size, for which he seeks quantifiable data. Citing a current example, he notes that a transaction with one taproot keypath spend and one taproot-paying output amounts to 111 vbytes and queries what the size would be under the new proposal.

Dave expresses skepticism about the practical value of slight reductions in onchain data size, suggesting that they may not be sufficient to garner significant attention or support from the community, especially if the proposal relies on new and untested elements within the Bitcoin ecosystem, like unfamiliar hash functions. He concludes by allowing for the possibility that he might have misunderstood the proposal and invites clarification to ensure his concerns are addressed appropriately.