The team will continue projects designed to push the boundaries of what is possible with Bitcoin.
Blockstream, the leading Bitcoin infrastructure company, has announced a newly formed Blockstream Research team focused on developing a platform at the core of the Bitcoin ecosystem, solving complex problems and pushing the boundaries of what is possible with Bitcoin.
There are various projects that the research team has been working on. The team created a more powerful programming language, Simplicity, designed as an alternative to Bitcoin Script. The team also created Miniscript, a safer language for writing structured Bitcoin Scripts that allow analysis, composition, public signatures and more. In addition to this, the company is also developing Elements Script, a set of extensions for Bitcoin Script that includes new covenant opcodes, which are still being researched.
Above: “Bitcoin Focused Cryptography Team,” from Blockstream.
Another area of focus for Blockstream is digital signature. The company has developed Cross Input Signature Aggregation (CISA / XISA), which enables several inputs in a single transaction to share a single signature, reducing the size of the transaction and increasing the efficiency of the Bitcoin network. The team has also developed MuSig2, a solution designed to make Bitcoin multisig transactions more efficient and at the same time more private.
Blockstream’s applied research team is also working on off-chain protocols such as Scriptless Scripts, which is a solution to enable the execution of smart contracts to be executed off-chain, providing benefits such as increased security, privacy, and scalability using the power of Schnorr signatures. . Fedimint, a federated e-cash protocol, enables a network of signatories to accept bitcoins with deposits and withdrawals and mint e-cash notes for users while maintaining privacy at the federation level.
The current research team consists of 10 highly experienced researchers, including the likes of Andrew Poelstra, Andrew Chow, Dr Russell O’Connor and Christian Lewe.
“Blockstream has been producing research output since its establishment in 2014, contributing ideas like OP_CSV and covenants to Segwit and Taproot. Historically we have done this as Bitcoin contributors, as Blockstreamers, and as ourselves. I am excited to continue putting out the ground. -breaking ideas new, such as MuSig, FROST, Simplicity and codex32, now under the Blockstream Research umbrella,” said Poelstra, who is Director of Research at Blockstream and a computer science researcher and mathematician from the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the Bitcoin community in 2011 and is known for being the first to start the Bitcoin Rust implementation, also contributing to libsecp256k1. Poelstra has created Bulletproofs, Secret Assets, Miniscript, and Taproot.
Dr. O’Connor, a core technology engineer with a background in mathematics and computer science, is best known for his work as the developer and author of “Simplicity: A New Language for Blockchains.” A five-year-plus Simplicity effort will be launched this year. Lewe, also a core technology engineer, quickly became a major contributor to Simplicity and was also instrumental in helping to maintain Miniscript.