The implementation of Taproot in Bitcoin, which is close to being carried out, would provide numerous benefits to wallets that support the Lightning network. This is what Darío Sneidermanis, developer of Muun Wallet assures, who maintains that the aforementioned scalability solution “opens a lot of doors.”
The first advantage that he mentions has to do with with commissions . The average commission in the Lightning network is 1 satoshi (USD 0.00034 at the time of writing this article) and with Taproot it could be less.
«Instead of including in the inputs two public keys (of approximately 30 bytes each) and two signatures (of approximately 70 bytes each), now only one signature is needed », Sneidermanis explains.
For this to be possible, both Taproot and Musig are necessary, which is a protocol «embedded in Schnorr signatures». As reported by CriptoNoticias, Schnorr signatures will be activated together with Taproot and improve network privacy and scalability.
Schnorr signatures allow a single transaction signature to replace a set of signatures with one same input and thus the space occupied by the blocks is reduced. Because of this, more transactions would fit in the same block and the commission per transaction would be lower.
Sneidermanis adds that both Muun and other wallets compatible with the Bitcoin Lightning network, will see their privacy set increased with the implementation of Taproot . “The privacy set of an address is the set of all addresses that look the same (or are indistinguishable) on the blockchain,” he explains. «The more addresses look the same, the more difficult it is to make a fingerprint of the wallet of a user ”, he adds.
If the adoption of Taproot is massive, protocols such as PayJoin that, by mixing BTC, add privacy to transactions, would become interoperable between wallets singlesig (single signature) and multisig (multi-signature). For the founder of Muun, who is a multisig wallet, this is of utmost importance for the interactive protocols that are beginning to be born .
Free Lightning Network Channels and Bitcoin Social Recovery Wallets
In addition, the developer explains that Taproot will allow things to be done with Lightning network wallets that previously couldn’t be done.
First, mention non-interactive channels ( non-interactive channels ). Taproot allows you to open payment channels on the Lightning network for free , simply by receiving BTC at an address on-chain . This facilitates the interaction between the base layer of Bitcoin and the second layer that is the Lightning network.
Second, Sneidermanis explains that Taproot will enable the creation of social recovery wallets in Bitcoin . This type of wallets, already existing in Ethereum, allows choosing “guardians” so that, in case of losing the private keys, they help the user to recover their funds.
This is of special importance for Muun , a wallet that seeks to simplify the user the storage of their private keys and their recovery. For this reason, although it is a non-custodial purse, it does not use the classic 12 or 24-word recovery model, but rather a model that includes a recovery code and an emergency kit.
As the Bitcoin ecosystem continues to develop, seed phrase recovery is likely to become less interoperable and more outdated. Fortunately, some of the brightest minds in the industry are working on new standards right now. (…) These standards allow wallets to create more secure and private configurations, keeping static backups feasible and interoperable.
Florence Ravenna, Head of Operations in Muun.
With the addition of guardians, The private key recovery process in Muun could be further simplified.
Improvements will not be seen immediately
Several specialists have indicated that, although the enthusiasm for the possibilities that are incorporated with Taproot is high, the improvements will not be immediate. Among them is developer Giacomo Zucco, who argues that it will be necessary to make some changes to the Lightning network standards .
Sneidermanis also warns that there will be no overnight changes in Muun when Taproot is activated . “These improvements are going to take a while because they require re-architecture of the protocol,” he explains.
