Blockstream Research
A Bitcoin-focused cryptography team.
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Programmability
Bitcoin Script is a stack-based smart contract language for locking and unlocking transactions, with flexibility and analyzability. However, Bitcoin Script lacks the expressiveness needed for more complex smart contracts. Miniscript and Simplicity are research efforts to bring safer and more extensible smart contracts to the blockchain.
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Security
Security is a top priority for all Bitcoin developers and users. Blockstream Research contributes to the development of robust cryptographic libraries, hardened operating systems, full node software, and verifiable smart contracting languages which are critical components in the full lifecycle of Bitcoin development.
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Privacy
Censorship-resistance and fungibility are fundamental properties of Bitcoin; without some degree of privacy, these properties can't exist. Blockstream Research is actively researching new methods and developing new standards to further improve privacy on the blockchain.

Core Technology

Building the Bitcoin-backed financial infrastructure that scales—on the lightning network and federations.

Core Technology
Federations
A more efficient blockchain that enables users to use different spending conditions with new opcodes and scripting languages.
Bitcoin
A peer-to-peer payment network and self-sovereign money that relies on cryptography to provide a transparent, secure, and reliable system.
Lightning
A network that enables users to make faster and nearly free transactions in payment channels, off of the primary bitcoin blockchain.

Research Talks

Watch our past Research Talks on YouTube, and see our events page for more upcoming presentations and workshops.

Selected Published Papers

Jonas Nick, Tim Ruffing, and Yannick Seurin
A. Back, M. Corallo, L. Dashjr, M. Friedenbach, G. Maxwell, A. Miller, A. Poelstra, J. Timón, and P. Wuille, 2014
H. Halpin and M. Piekarska.
C. Decker and R. Wattenhofer, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, 2014.
Andrew Poelstra. 2015.
Tim Ruffing, Viktoria Ronge, Elliott Jin, Jonas Schneider-Bensch, Dominique Schröder. 2022.
Whitepapers

Research Lab

Pioneering new technologies that improve the security, efficiency, and scalability of the blockchain.

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Taproot
An upgrade to Bitcoin that batches multiple signatures and transactions together, making it easier and faster to verify transactions on Bitcoin.
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PSBTs
A Bitcoin standard that improves the portability of unsigned transactions, and enables multiple parties to easily sign the same transaction.
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Deterministic Builds
Software that enables multiple people to compile the same source code into identical binaries for better audibility and security.
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Covenants
New spending conditions that enable greater extensibility in how coins are transferred on the blockchain.
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MuSig
A protocol for aggregating public keys and signatures for the schnorr digital signature algorithm.
Developer Tools

Developer Tools

Our tools enable developers to build more secure and reliable software. Run your bitcoin node on NixOS with Nix-Bitcoin. Get started writing structured Bitcoin Scripts with Miniscript, or stand up your own federated with Fedimint.

Start Building
Start with Secure Primitives - Libsecp256k1

An optimized C library for ECDSA signatures and secret/public key operations on the secp256k1 curve.
Run Your Node on a Hardened Operating System - NixOS & Nix-Bitcoin

A purely functional package manager that builds the entire operating system from source code, minimizes attack surface, and runs your bitcoin node.
Build Safer Wallets - Miniscript

A language for writing Bitcoin Scripts in a structured way, making analysis composition, and generic signing simpler.
Write More Express Script - Simplicity

A work-in-progress programming language with greater flexibility and expressiveness than Bitcoin Script.
Run a Community Bitcoin Federation - Fedimint

A federated chaumian mint that enables users to create a bitcoin-backed mint with deposits and withdrawals.