[bitcoin-dev] Unenforceable fee obligations in multiparty protocols with Taproot inputs

[Andrew Poelstra]

On Wed, Feb 08, 2023 at 09:34:57AM +0000, Michael Folkson wrote:
> Hi Andrew
> 
> > There is a bug in Taproot that allows the same Tapleaf to be repeated multiple times in the same Taproot, potentially at different Taplevels incurring different Tapfee rates.
> >> The countermeasure is that you should always know the entire Taptree when interacting with someone's Tapspend.
> 
> I wouldn't say it is a "bug" unless there is a remedy for the bug that wasn't (and retrospectively should have been) included in the Taproot design. In retrospect and assuming you could redesign the Taproot consensus rules again today would you prevent spending from a valid P2TR address if a repeated Tapleaf hash was used to prove that a spending path was embedded in a Taproot tree? That's the only thing I can think of to attempt to remedy this "bug" and it would only be a partial protection as proving a spending path exists within a Taproot tree only requires a subset of the Tapleaf hashes.
> 
> I only point this out because there seems to be a push to find "bugs" and "accidental blowups" in the Taproot design currently. No problem with this if there are any, they should definitely be highlighted and discussed if they do exist. The nearest to a possible inferior design decision thus far that I'm aware of is x-only pubkeys in BIP340 [0].
> 

I'm actually not certain what Russell's referring to, but if it's indeed
possible to construct TapTrees where the "same" leafhash appears multiple
times at different heights, that's something unintended and which we
could've fixed by changing the Merkle structure. I don't even think
there would've been an efficiency tradeoff.

So I think it's totally reasonable to call such a thing a "bug".

-- 
Andrew Poelstra
Director of Research, Blockstream
Email: apoelstra at wpsoftware.net
Web:   https://www.wpsoftware.net/andrew

The sun is always shining in space
    -Justin Lewis-Webster

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