What you're looking at above is an illustration of an example of Taproot spending conditions. The chart comes from this incredible blog post by BitMEX Research that dives into the Schnorr Signature and Taproot softfork proposal that Pieter Wuille posted to the Bitcoin mailing list in May. We here at the Bent covered the fact that a proposal had been proposed when the news broke, but our friends at BitMEX took a better deep dive that your freaks should check out when you get a chance if you're keen on staying up to date with the latest technical proposals for Bitcoin.

Learn how Schnorr signatures differ from ECDSA signatures, the current algorithm used to generate Bitcoin private-public key pairs. What a Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree is and how Taproot's construction is different. And how, when combined, these two upgrades could lead to a win-win-win scenario for privacy, scalability and capability (the ability to code more interesting smart contracts).

After you read BitMEX's piece, it may be a good idea to peep this recent email from Pieter Wuille that includes some updates to Taproot in particular. And then after that, if you still have some time, peep this video from Steve Lee, formerly of Bitcoin Optech and now with Square Crypto, in which he dives into the Schnorr + Taproot softfork proposal as well as a couple others.

Final thought...

Life is weird. Like really weird when you think about it.