When a transaction requires signatures from several parties, storing every signature can make it grow linearly. Signature aggregation compresses several digital signatures into one signature representation, reducing that overhead. section 8.8
The technique fits into a broader trust-splitting design:
- Multi-signature rules require signatures from several different public keys, so an attacker must compromise all required signatures to forge a transaction. section 8.8
- Schemes such as BLS can compress those signatures into one signature, while some designs also aggregate the public keys. section 8.8
- Distributed key generation addresses public-key aggregation by letting participants create a shared public key without exposing its associated private key. section 8.8
A smaller multi-signature transaction
Suppose a transaction accepts signatures from Alice and several other participants. A naive multi-signature design stores each signature separately; signature aggregation replaces them with one compressed signature representation while preserving the multi-party signing arrangement. section 8.8
