The team will continue with projects designed to push the boundaries of what is possible with Bitcoin.
Blockstream, a leading Bitcoin infrastructure company, has announced a formalized agreement Block Flow Investigation team with a focus on advancing the platforms at the core of the Bitcoin ecosystem, tackling complex problems and pushing the boundaries of what is possible with Bitcoin.
There are a variety of projects already in progress that the research team is working on. The team has created a more robust programming language, Simplicity, which is designed as an alternative to Bitcoin Script. The team has also created Miniscript, a more secure language for writing structured Bitcoin scripts that allows parsing, composition, generic signing, and more. In addition to this, the company is also developing Elements Script, a set of Bitcoin Script extensions that includes new convention opcodes, which are still being explored.
Above: “The Bitcoin-Focused Crypto Teamby Blockstream.
Another area of focus for Blockstream is digital signatures. The company has developed Cross Input Signature Aggregation (CISA/XISA), which allows multiple inputs in a single transaction to share a single signature, reducing transaction sizes and improving 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 smart contract execution to take place off-chain, bringing benefits such as increased security, privacy and scalability using the power of Schnorr signatures. . Fedimint, a federated electronic cash protocol, allows a network of signatories to accept bitcoins with deposits and withdrawals and accumulate electronic cash notes for users while maintaining privacy at the federation level.
The research team now consists of 10 highly experienced researchers, including Andrew Poelstra, Andrew Chow, Dr. Russell O’Connor and Christian Lewe.
“Blockstream has been producing research output since its founding in 2014, contributing ideas like OP_CSV and conventions to Segwit and Taproot. Historically, we’ve done this as Bitcoin contributors, as Blockstreamers, and as ourselves. I’m excited to continue advancing -breaking new ideas, like MuSig, FROST, Simplicity and codex32, now under the umbrella of Blockstream Research,” said Poelstra, who serves as Director of Research at Blockstream and is a computer science researcher and mathematician at the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the Bitcoin community in 2011 and became known for being the first to start a Bitcoin Rust implementation, as well as contributing to libsecp256k1.Poelstra has co-invented Bulletproofs, Confidential 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.” Simplicity’s five-plus year effort is expected to launch this year. Lewe, also a technical engineer at Core, has quickly become a major contributor to Simplicity and has also been instrumental in helping to maintain Miniscript.
