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Informational 15 Bitcoin

Merge bitcoin/bitcoin#36327: test: speed up secp256k1 fixed-base multiplication and Schnorr signing

Public commit record

What the developer wrote

Authored by merge-script

91/100 · Strong
Merge bitcoin/bitcoin#36327: test: speed up secp256k1 fixed-base multiplication and Schnorr signing

b6fc3cf0046d3106e0dfb30f320d48514eff6fb2 test: speed up secp256k1 fixed-base multiplication (brunoerg)

Pull request description:

This PR speeds up the test framework’s fixed-base multiplication and Schnorr signing by:

- Changing FastGEMul to process scalars in 4-bit windows instead of individual bits. Precompute all 16 multiples for each window position, reducing multiplication from about 128 point additions on average to 64 table lookups and about 60 nonzero point additions. This trades a larger table and additional initialization work for cheaper repeated multiplications.

On my local machine (Macbook M2 Pro) the `feature_taproot.py`'s medium time decreased from 83.39s to 35.42s.

ACKs for top commit:
fametrano:
tACK b6fc3cf0046d3106e0dfb30f320d48514eff6fb2
theStack:
ACK b6fc3cf0046d3106e0dfb30f320d48514eff6fb2
ViniciusCestarii:
tACK b6fc3cf0046d3106e0dfb30f320d48514eff6fb2

Tree-SHA512: 983c1e971122e7a15458436943d5c14a936e86b157bc8c74ce1631aafcd0c7f35bbc476df625a57afb37d4e32bb620d1f1d5b3e2267867279bca736f170e83c9
✓ Specific, descriptive subject✓ Names a concrete action or component✓ Provides detailed explanatory context✓ Mentions testing or verification✓ Links an issue, advisory, or supporting reference
The short version

What changed, and why it matters

This commit is a pure performance optimization for Bitcoin Core's internal test framework. It changes how the test code performs certain mathematical operations on the secp256k1 elliptic curve, making tests run faster. There is no change to live network code, wallet behavior, consensus rules, or cryptographic security. It does not fix a vulnerability or introduce a known security risk.

Recommended action

No security action required. Treat as a normal test-framework performance improvement.

Security signals we found

No strong security signals were identified.

Risk score

Why this scored 15/100

Our methodology →
Potential impact 0/30
Exploitability 0/25
Stealth signal 0/15
Affected reach 0/15
Confidence 10/10
Evidence quality 5/5
Human-validated context

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