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.

  • ROAST: Robust Asynchronous Schnorr Threshold ...

  • Onchain Panel - TABConf 2022

  • MuSig2 w/ Tim Ruffing

  • Sanket Kanjalkar - Miniscript

  • ROAST: Robust Asynchronous Schnorr Threshold ...

  • MIT Bitcoin Expo 2022: Breaking Through - Lon...

  • MIT Bitcoin Expo 2022: Breaking Through - Bit...

  • Open Sourcing Money: Andrew Poelstra, Matt Od...

  • Elsirion (Blockstream) on adding privacy to t...

  • Jonas Nick (Blockstream) on scaling Bitcoin w...

  • Bitcoin 2022 Conference - Signatures - Open S...

  • Bitcoin 2022 Conference - The Future of Light...

  • Coin Selection Algorithms - Andrew Chow - TAB...

  • SLP331 Eric Sirion - MiniMint, Federated Mint...

  • Bitcoin Mini Script - Andrew Poelstra - TABCo...

  • Scaling Bitcoin On-Chain - TABConf 2021

  • Onboarding Bitcoin and Lightning Developers -...

  • Improving Bitcoin Privacy with Federated E-Ca...

  • MuSig2: Simple Two-Round Schnorr Multi-Signatures

  • SLP292 Andrew Chow Output Script Descriptors ...

  • Talks at Summer of Bitcoin: The CS in Bitcoin...

  • Jonas Nick and Tim Ruffing | Signature Half A...

  • Jonas Nick | Security Of Schnorr Signatures |...

  • Bitcoin 2021: Smart Contracts On Liquid

  • MIT Bitcoin Expo 2021: The New Normal What Bi...

  • MuSig2: Simple Two-Round Schnorr Multi-Signat...

  • Jonas Nick | MuSig-DN: Schnorr Multi-Signatur...

  • SLP222 Jonas Nick and Tim Ruffing What’s MuSi...

  • Dr. Adam Back | Simplicity | Consensus: Distr...

  • Explaining Miniscript w/ Andrew Poelstra #Tec...

  • Explaining Miniscript With Andrew Poelstra Du...

  • Getting started with miniscript

  • Rethinking Wallet Architecture: Native Descri...

  • Simplicity: Next-Gen Smart Contracting Webina...

  • MIT Bitcoin Expo 2020 - Taproot

  • Andrew Poelstra - Bitcoin Script to Miniscript

  • Andrew Chow - Hardware Wallets in Bitcoin Core

  • MCC 2019: Andrew Poelstra - The "Crypto" In C...

  • #TCConf19 - Adam Back - Simplicity - A New La...

  • Miniscript - Andrew Poelstra - CES Summit '19

  • Simplicity - Russell O'Connor - CES Summit '19

  • SLP99 Andrew Chow - Hardware Wallets and Bitc...

  • Bitcoin 2019: Rethinking Smart Contract Devel...

  • Bitcoin 2019: Addressing Privacy

  • MoneroKon 2019 - Monerokon Madness: Schnorr S...

  • nix-bitcoin: building a purely functional Bit...

  • Building on Bitcoin - Taproot and Scriptless ...

  • Andrew Poelstra on Schnorr, Taproot & Graft R...

  • Fragile Nonce Selection and ZKPs as a Solutio...

  • MIT Bitcoin Expo 2019 - Schnorr, MuSig, Thres...

  • Andrew Poelstra: Implementing Compact Thresho...

  • Andrew Chow: Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions

  • Andrew Poelstra on Bitcoin Math & Research

  • Jonas Nick on Liquid in Zurich December 2018

  • Coinbase Speaker Series: Greg Maxwell of Bloc...

  • Scale By The Bay: Russell O'Connor, Simplicit...

  • Building on Bitcoin - Blind Signatures in Scr...

  • Taproot, and Schnorr, and SIGHASH_NOINPUT, oh my!

  • Schnorr signatures for Bitcoin: challenges an...

  • Simplicity: A New Language for Blockchains - ...

  • Mimblewimble and Scriptless Scripts | Andrew ...

  • Greg Maxwell: Advances in Block Propagation

  • Greg Maxwell: A Deep Dive Into Bitcoin Core 0.15

  • Pieter Wuille: New Address Type for SegWit Ad...

  • Bitcoin Privacy: Theory and Practice - Jonas ...

  • Pieter Wuille: Segregated witness and its imp...

  • Scaling Bitcoin - Hong kong

  • SF Bitcoin Devs Seminar: Key Tree Signatures

  • SF Bitcoin Devs Seminar: Greg Maxwell

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.