BLS signatures is one of the new planned evolution of Schnorr signatures.
BLS signatures is short for Boneh-Lynn-Shacham signatures which is a newer concept that builds on top of Schnoor idea on optimizing blocks.
Schnorr normally leads 25-40+% more capacity by reducing storage requirements for Bitcoin. Here an idea of what I mean for Schnorr:
Let assume that it a 25% block space efficiency. Segwit(which is needed for Schoor to be added) gives a 2 MB block increase which is 4000 Tx per block.
A 25% efficiency on blocks would mean 2 MB=1.5 MB. However the blocks still only have 4000 tx. Think of it as reduced blocksize with the same amount of transactions.
Schnorr also helps Batched txs to be way more cheaper to send thus encouraging more exchanges/mass senders to use Batching. Batching is the act of sending multiple txs as one txs thus giving massive cost benifts. Schnorr further gives cost benifts to batch txs.
Read more about Schoor here:
https://golos.io/bitcoin/@sames/the-next-big-thing-in-bitcoin-network-schnorr-signatures
So how does BLS signature improve on Schnorr?
Schnorr signatures are awesome-scaling and making blocks smaller? That a dream world right there :)
if done right Schnorr can combine all signatures and public keys in the transaction to a single key and a signature and nobody will find out that they correspond to multiple keys. Also block validation can be faster-all signatures can validate at once.
There are a few issues though:
- We can‘t combine all signatures in the block to a single signature.
- more here: https://medium.com/@snigirev.stepan/bls-signatures-better-than-schnorr-5a7fe30ea716
BLS signatures combines all signatures in a block to a single signature.
If you did not know how segwit works well it helps increase block size by storing Signature data by organizing them differently.
BLS signatures reduces the signature size but keeps the same txs amount per block.
So same amount of transactions but blocks are 1mb instead of ~1.8mb
1mb = 1.8mb worth of transactions, 2mb = 3.6mb worth of transactions etc..
So about a 55% efficiency
Same capacity and smaller blocksize.
How does it make it more efficient than Schnorr?
Schnorr requires additional back and forth of signatures between the original signers, while BLS can collapse the signature.
However BLS signatures validates much slower than Schnorr.
But since there would be only 1 signature per block this may not be as important.
There are security challenges as well however this is also new hence why forgivable.
BLS can also be softforked in.
This won't replace Schnorr yet, Schnorr has been battle tested and will be out soon. Schnoor will help BLS to be added in the future. Schnoor will help Bitcoin(+LN )to scale in the meantime while BLS is tested fixing its problems and becoming even more efficient and be released in the future.
So Schnorr is still the next step in Bitcoin scalability plans-in fact a soft fork adding Schnorr is out.
Again read about Schnorr here: https://golos.io/bitcoin/@sames/the-next-big-thing-in-bitcoin-network-schnorr-signatures
This is a more improved version of my article posted on steemit :)
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@sames/bls-signatures-better-than-schnorr-signatures
So what do you think about Schnorr and BLS signatures?
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://bitcointribune.org/2018/09/10/schnorr-signatures-is-the-not-the-final-signature-method-coming-to-bitcoin/