One of the most recent proposals that is capturing the attention of developers and users of Bitcoin is Frost (flexible round-optimized Schnorr Threshold), a cryptography protocol that promises to transform the way in which multisig wallets are managed. Frost opens new possibilities for collaborative custody and inheritance planning. This advance, which relies on Taproot's capabilities, could change the rules of Bitcoin custody dynamics By allowing the rotation of keys, committed or not, without the need to move funds on the network of cryptoactive. As such, Frost is not an update of the Bitcoin base protocol, but an innovation in cryptography that is implemented At external applications and tools, such as Wallets. For this reason, its implementation does not require consensus changes in the network or the formalization of official improvement proposals. On April 19, 2025, a user known in X as @W_S_Bitcoin shared his enthusiasm on Frost's implications: «The rotation of multisig off-chain keys will be a radical change with Frost. Imagine being able to remove or replace a committed key without moving your funds, and what this means for collaborative custody and inheritance planning. » The publication put on the table a technical solution that has been taking time and now seems close to becoming a reality, thanks to projects such as Frostsnap. However, and although it could be close to materializing, there are no specific dates for its launch. According to Frostnap from his X account, the rotation of keys occupies «a prominent place in our list of pending tasks once we have finished polishing the basic aspects of our Wallet and we have Frostsnap in your hands.»
What is Frost in Bitcoin?
Frost, which means flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold, is a protocol that takes advantage of Schnorr firms and Taproot addresses, two improvements introduced in Bitcoin in recent years, to optimize the management of multisig schemes. This protocol was proposed by researchers Chelsea Komlo, Ian Goldberg and Douglas Stebila in 2020. In a nutshell, it allows a group of participants to manage a shared wallet so that, even if one of the private keys is compromised, This can be replaced without the need for transactions in the Bitcoin network or generate a new full wallet from scratch.
On the one hand, this reduces the costs associated with network commissions; On the other, it improves privacy, since the transactions generated with Frost are seen in the chain as if they were unique, indistinguishable signatures of a conventional transaction in the Mempool. The potential of this technology did not go unnoticed by Frostsnap, a project that is developing specific devices to implement Frost. In response to the comment of @W_S_Bitcoin, the Frostsnap team expressed in X his expectation that «the day comes when we do not have to move an entire Wallet to a new one just to change a signatory.» As cryptootics reported, Frostsnap works on solutions that allow users to manage shared keys between multiple devices, ensuring that transactions are safer and more private. No one can distinguish that Bitcoin is protected by a scheme MultisigThey assure Frostsnap, highlighting how Taproot hides the collaborative nature of operations. Technically speaking, multiphmas generated with this protocol They look like any Taproot transaction (BC1P) on the Bitcoin Network.
From a technical point of view, Frost represents a significant advance in the field of cryptography applied to the Bitcoin Network. This protocol allows to implement the traditional schemes of threshold signatures (Threshold Signatures) of type «N-de-M», where only a subset of participants needs to sign to authorize a transaction.
Advantages and challenges of the Frost protocol in Bitcoin
This process is carried out completely outside the chain, through communication rounds between the participants, which eliminates the need to expose the details of the multisig scheme in the Bitcoin network. In addition, when integrating with Taproot, the resulting transactions are cheaper in terms of space in the chain and more private, since they do not reveal the complexity of the custody arrangement. However, Frost's implementation is not exempt from challenges. The same technical source indicates that the complexity of its development is an important barrier: guaranteeing a safe and reliable implementation on different platforms and programming languages will be key to its mass adoption. Despite these obstacles, the official draft of the protocol, available at the IETF and published in June 2024, shows that Frost It is in an advanced stage of de development and technical definitionsuggesting that its practical use could be just around the corner. For Bitcoin users, Frost's implications are interesting. In a context of collaborative custody, the possibility of rotating keys without moving funds reduces the risks associated with the loss or commitment of a key. In terms of inheritance, it allows to design schemes where the beneficiaries can access the funds without the need for onerous or public transactions in the Bitcoin Network, while modifying the policies of access to these inheritances in case it is necessary through the rotation of keys. In addition, the privacy it offers by hiding the multisig nature of transactions could make surveillance efforts by external actors difficult, a crucial aspect in a context where the traceability of transactions remains an issue discussed.