Leading Bitcoin in one step! Bitcoin Cash (BCH) will be hard forked next week to welcome Schnorr signature

The Bitcoin Cash network is scheduled to fork on May 15, and the community has been preparing for the upgrade, which will include an increase in Schnorr signature and Segwit recovery .

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BCH upgrade time: May 15, 2019, shortly after 12 pm

According to the roadmap, every six months, the BCH blockchain will be upgraded to add new features to increase scalability, privacy and overall network performance. The hard fork that will be launched on May 15th (next Wednesday) will require all participants to upgrade their software. The BCH full node implementation compatible with this hard fork includes client versions such as Bitcoin ABC 0.19.4, Bchd 0.14.2, Bitprim 0.19.0, and Bitcoin Unlimited Cash Edition 1.6.0.0 . This upgrade will eventually add two new protocol features to BCH: Segwit Recovery and the much anticipated Schnorr signature .

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Upgrade: Benefits of Segwit Recovery and Scnorr Signatures

Segwit recovery is basically a new CLEANSTACK rule attached to the latest protocol upgrade implementation, which makes it impossible for miners to recover BCH from the Segwit address. In essence, upgrades after May 15 will exempt these unrecoverable coins and make them available for consumption. The BCH hard fork specification on Github explains: "This means that once the P2SH redemption script is pre-imaged (for example, by spending coins from the corresponding BTC address), any miner can get the coins."

The most striking thing is that this upgrade adds the Schnorr signature. This digital signature scheme invented by Klaus Schnoll will allow BCH users to construct keys in an unusual way. For example, using a Schnorr signature instead of an ECDSA signature allows for the use of concepts such as multi-signature aggregation in the future. For laymen, the concept essentially reduces transaction size by using aggregated signatures compared to using multiple signatures. In essence, this grouping produces the same cryptographic proof, which reduces the storage and bandwidth of the blockchain. Another advantage that Schnorr signatures can provide is that privacy can be provided when users and developers combine a batch of public key schemes with different protocols such as OP_CHECKSIG and payto-public-key-hash (P2PKH) addresses.

BCH developers have added the Schnorr signature scheme as an alternative to traditional ECDSA signatures. Engineers will introduce Schnorr using the same curve as ECDSA, so that ordinary users will not notice upgrades like the previous forks, such as when the block size increases. However, in terms of development, the Schnorr signature uses only 64 bytes, which is lower than the typical 70-byte ECDSA signature. Basically, programmers implementing the upgrade feature can reduce transaction size by approximately 4%. However, the conversion from ECDSA to Schnorr is completely optional, but there are some encouraging benefits to implementing this change. In addition to scalability and privacy, Schnorr offers a feature for the wallet platform that uses the protocol: replay protection. Other benefits of Schnorr, BCH developers will be able to use after May 15th, including:

1. The payment channel is hidden as a normal payment.
2. Hidden for atomic swaps for ordinary payments.
3. A payment channel network in the form of a lightning network can be implemented if needed.
4. A security chain (layer 2) involving multiple unconfirmed transactions.

Future Schnorr-related upgrades can enhance public signature aggregation, reduce blockchain storage and bandwidth by 25%, and design complex smart contracts

In the past, many cryptographers thought that Schnorr was more complete than ECDSA, but blockchain programmers could not use this concept because it was patented. Now that the patent has expired, BCH programmers can use Schnorr signatures and build a number of improvements. After the fork on May 15, the new feature will first bring the basic capabilities of the Schnorr signature, which will set the protocol for future forks associated with Schnorr. For example, further upgrades will be able to support public signature aggregation, reducing blockchain storage and bandwidth by 20-25%. Another upgrade can help eliminate the scalability of the signature so that programmers can design complex smart contracts.

Further upgrades can introduce public signature aggregation, which can reduce storage and bandwidth while introducing more complex concepts.

As mentioned above, this fork will be carried out next Wednesday (after 12:00 UTC on May 15th) and the agreement will be locked at a specific block height. After that, after 11 more blocks, the BCH chain will perform the upgrade and the rule changes will take effect. BCH fans will be able to watch the fork in real time on a data site like Coin Dance, so that changes to the consensus rules have been implemented as planned.

In addition, existing wallets using ESDSA will operate in the same way as before, so ordinary users may not immediately notice how different. Developers will find this feature attractive because it reduces transaction size by 4% and can be built in new ways. There will be a variety of complex solutions to be launched in the future, and the May 15 upgrade will be the basis for all innovative concepts.

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