Bitcoin's threshold for trust-minimization—without a soft fork | SAM BLACKSHEAR
Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen DukeShow Notes
Some of the most impressive technical and commercial leaders in digital assets emerged from what insiders call the "Libra Mafia" — the team assembled by Meta to build Libra (later Diem).
Though the project ultimately succumbed to regulatory pressure, it produced a generation of founders and engineers who went on to shape the industry, including Sam Blackshear, a leading expert in blockchain programming languages and CTO of Mysten Labs.
In this episode of Bitcoin Rails, Sam joins me to discuss:
why Mysten Labs has turned its focus toward Bitcoin + why Sam leans conservative on soft-fork changes to Bitcoin script
what makes a strong crypto programming language + why EVM is missing the mark\
why trust minimization remains the critical technical challenge standing between Bitcoin and broader DeFi adoption
Why Mysten Lab's new Hashi architecture may be the most trust-minimized architecture for Bitcoin "bridging" without a soft fork This episode of Bitcoin Rails is brought to you by: LayerTwo Labs — developing research, software, and technologies for scaling Bitcoin via the integration of Drivechains (BIP 300/301) Hashi on Sui Network — a primitive for executing Bitcoin Defi transactions, without having to trust a federated bridge or other centralized entity BitBox — an open-source Bitcoin-only hardware wallet, with smooth UX and no compromises on security. Check out Bitbox [dot] swiss and use code BITCOINRAILS to get a discount
More from Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke
There are few people as close to the frontlines of Bitcoin privacy as Cake Wallet COO Seth for Privacy. After cutting his teeth building for Monero, Seth turned his focus to Bitcoin in 2022, with the view that making Bitcoin more private would ultimately help more people than focusing on a smaller niche target group alone.
Isabel Foxen Duke sits down with [[alloc] init] co-founder Misha Komarov and Head of Protocol Research Clara Shikhelman to examine PIPEs, a cryptographic framework that utilizes witness encryption—a primitive long dismissed as purely theoretical—to unlock advanced Bitcoin programming without a soft fork.
The first fully specified post-quantum signature scheme for Bitcoin has been proposed to the Bitcoin mailing list.
To date, post-quantum Bitcoin discussions have largely centered on which digital signature schemes offer the strongest cryptographic security against a quantum adversary.
Paul Sztorc founder and CEO of LayerTwo Labs and author of Bitcoin Improvement Proposals 300 and 301 (Drivechains), has been one of Bitcoin's most persistent—and controversial—thinkers, advocating for merge-mined sidechains as a way to dramatically expand Bitcoin's functionality while preserving the security of the base layer.