Location: Zoom

Date: Friday, 10th April

Project: Blockstream

Role: Director of Research

Bitcoin is very conservative. Unlike the typical tech industry ethos of move fast and break things, it is paramount that Bitcoin upgrades and changes to the protocol are absolutely necessary, slow, well planned and well tested.

Two protocol changes that have been discussed for a while now are Schnorr signatures and Taproot. These proposals have lots of positive implications, including an improvement to privacy and scalability, but what will it mean for an average Bitcoin user? What is next on the roadmap?

In this interview, I talk to Andrew Poelstra, the Director of Research at Blockstream. We discuss the upcoming upgrades to the Bitcoin protocol, including Schnorr signatures, Taproot and Miniscript and what that means to Bitcoin users.