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Schnorr Signature
A digital signature scheme that allows multiple signatures to be mathematically combined into one, enabling more compact and private multi-signature transactions.
A Schnorr signature is a digital signature scheme with a mathematical property standard ECDSA signatures lack: multiple individual Schnorr signatures can be combined into a single aggregate signature, making a multi-signature transaction indistinguishable on-chain from an ordinary single-signer one.
Bitcoin adopted Schnorr signatures as part of its 2021 Taproot upgrade (see Kaavon's "Taproot" glossary definition), specifically to make multisig and other complex spending conditions more compact and more private than they were under the previous signature scheme.
Examples
- A multisig transaction using Schnorr signature aggregation can look identical on-chain to an ordinary single-signer transaction, improving privacy.
- Schnorr signature aggregation was one of the core technical improvements Bitcoin's Taproot upgrade introduced.