Published on: 2020-02-14T21:21:15+00:00
A group of anonymous developers have proposed a modification to the Taproot specification in BIP-341 to optimize its public NUMS and enhance privacy. The proposal suggests removing the need for public NUMS and introducing bare MAST (Merkleized Abstract Syntax Trees) to prevent the leakage of metadata from different public NUMS. The use of a NUMS point in Taproot can still be maintained for greater anonymity, but it is recommended only when a single-use nonce can be sent. Private NUMS are noted to provide more privacy benefits with a minimal impact on the likelihood of losing funds.The proposal has garnered support as well as alternative responses from the developer community. Suggestions include implementing a discounting rule for the Public NUMS or modifying the leaf version portion of C[0] to denote Public NUMS and avoid including the point explicitly. These discussions are being conducted under pseudonyms to keep the focus on technical issues rather than personal politics.In addition to the proposed modification, the group of developers discusses the design merits of Taproot compared to simpler alternatives. They also propose an alternative path for deploying the technologies described in BIP-340, BIP-341, and BIP-342.It is highlighted that using a NUMS point in Taproot may decrease privacy if the points differ across applications, potentially allowing for wallet fingerprinting. Therefore, the recommendation is to use the NUMS point only when a single-use nonce can be sent, ensuring that it cannot be distinguished from a normal Taproot by third parties unaware of the setup.Overall, the goal of the anonymous developer group is to contribute to finding the best way forward with Taproot, without causing division within the community.
Updated on: 2023-08-02T01:50:53.571727+00:00