Blockstream Forms Research Team Dedicated to Bitcoin Innovation

The research team is currently working on several projects. Simplicity, a stronger programming language, was created by the team. It is intended to be an alternative to Bitcoin script. Miniscript, a safer language to write structured Bitcoin Scripts, has been created by the team. It allows analysis, composition, generic signature, and many other features. The company is also working on Elements Script, a language for writing structured Bitcoin Scripts that includes new covenant opcodes. Cross Input Signature Aggregation is a technology that allows multiple inputs to a single transaction, reducing the transaction size 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 simultaneously 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, providing benefits such as increased security, privacy, and scalability utilizing the power of Schnorr signatures. Fedimint is a federated electronic cash protocol that allows a network of signers accept bitcoin with withdrawals and deposits. It also mints e-cash notes to users while keeping privacy at the federation level. Blockstream has been producing research output ever since its inception in 2014. It has contributed ideas such as OP_CSV, covenants to Segwit, and Taproot. This has been done in the past as Bitcoin contributors, Blockstreamers, or ourselves. “I’m excited to keep putting out ground breaking new ideas, like MuSig, FOST, Simplicity, and codex32, now that Blockstream Research is under my umbrella,” Poelstra, who is the Director of Research at Blockstream, and is a computer science researcher from the University of Texas at Austin. Poelstra joined the Bitcoin community in 2011. He is known for being the first person to implement Rust Bitcoin and also contributing to libsecp256k1. Dr. O’Connor is a Core tech engineer with a background both in mathematics and computer science. He is best known as the author and developer of “Simplicity, A New Language for Blockchains.” Simplicity, a five-plus year-old project, is expected to launch in this year. Lewe, a Core tech engineer has quickly become a major contributor to Simplicity. He has also been instrumental in maintaining Miniscript.