{"id":5082,"date":"2023-02-23T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-23T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci02b8a351e008244c"},"modified":"2023-02-23T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T18:00:00","slug":"blockstream-formalizes-research-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/business\/blockstream-formalizes-research-team","title":{"rendered":"Blockstream Formalizes Research Team Dedicated To Bitcoin Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div><p>Blockstream, a leading Bitcoin infrastructure company, has announced a formalized <a href=\"https:\/\/research.blockstream.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Blockstream Research<\/a> team with a focus on advancing the platforms at the core of the Bitcoin ecosystem, tackling complex problems and pushing the boundaries of what&#8217;s possible with Bitcoin.<\/p>\n<p>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 safer language for writing structured Bitcoin Scripts that enables analysis, composition, generic signing and more. In addition to this, the company is also developing Elements Script, a set of extensions to Bitcoin Script that includes new covenant opcodes, which are still being explored.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"w5NQfmIkyi8\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Blockstream Research\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/w5NQfmIkyi8?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><em>Above: &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=w5NQfmIkyi8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Bitcoin Focused Cryptography Team<\/a>,&#8221; from Blockstream.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Another area of focus for Blockstream is digital signatures. The company has developed Cross Input Signature Aggregation (CISA\/XISA), which enables multiple inputs in a single transaction to share a single signature, reducing the size of transactions 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 simultaneously more private.<\/p>\n<p>Blockstream&#8217;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, a federated e-cash protocol, enables a network of signers to accept bitcoin with deposits and withdrawals and mint e-cash notes for users while maintaining privacy at the level of the federation.<\/p>\n<p>The research team now consists of 10 highly experienced researchers, including the likes of Andrew Poelstra, Andrew Chow, Dr. Russell O\u2019Connor and Christian Lewe.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Blockstream has been producing research output since its founding in 2014, contributing ideas like OP_CSV and covenants to Segwit and Taproot. Historically we&#8217;ve done this as Bitcoin contributors, as Blockstreamers, and as ourselves. I&#8217;m excited to continue putting out ground-breaking new ideas, such as MuSig, FROST, Simplicity and codex32, now under the Blockstream Research umbrella,\u201d said Poelstra, who serves as Director of Research at Blockstream and is a computer science researcher and mathematician from the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the Bitcoin community in 2011 and became known for being the first to start a Rust implementation of Bitcoin, as well as contributing to libsecp256k1. Poelstra has co-invented Bulletproofs, Confidential Assets, Miniscript, and Taproot.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. O&#8217;Connor, a Core tech engineer with a background in mathematics and computer science, is best known for his work as the developer and author of &#8220;Simplicity: A New Language for Blockchains.&#8221; The five-plus-year endeavor of Simplicity is expected to launch this year. Lewe, also a Core tech engineer, has quickly become a primary contributor to Simplicity and has also been instrumental in helping to maintain Miniscript.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The team will continue with projects designed to push the boundaries of what\u2019s possible with Bitcoin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2730,"featured_media":5083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[287,93,474],"class_list":{"0":"post-5082","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-blockstream","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-research"},"author_data":{"id":2730,"name":"BtcCasey","nicename":"casey","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/jn_tjlo_400x400.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/blog_placeholders_research.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2730"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}