Threshold Schnorr
Overview
Schnorr signatures are a type of digital signature scheme popularly used amongst blockchain networks because they are efficient, simple, and allow for multi-signatures, threshold signatures, and aggregated signatures to be used on the network. On ICP, threshold Schnorr signatures enable canisters to hold a wider range of digital assets and allow for direct integrations with other chains like Solana.
Specifically, threshold Schnorr signatures on ICP provide:
Support for BIP-340, which is Bitcoin's variant of Schnorr used in Ordinals, Runes, and BRC-20.
Support for Ed25519 signatures, which are used by chains such as Solana, Cardano, Polkadot, and Ripple. Ed25519 is also a popular signature scheme outside of blockchains for Web2 functions such as signing X.509 certificates.
Provide higher signature throughput than threshold ECDSA signatures.
Allow canisters to obtain their own Schnorr public key and address, unlocking the ability for them to derive addresses on other chains, then authorize and submit transactions on those chains.
Enable Schnorr signatures to be computed on arbitrary messages.
Signing messages and transactions
Threshold Schnorr can be used by making calls to the threshold Schnorr API.
Learn how to use threshold Schnorr to sign messages and transactions.