Andrew Poelstra on Bitcoin Math & Research

Interview location: Boston
Interview date: Saturday 9th March, 2019
Company: Blockstream
Role: Director of Research

I usually write a few paragraphs about each show, but with this interview, I struggled, primarily because Andrew’s work for Blockstream is so technically advanced that I didn’t know how to describe it, this might be why we had so much fun in this interview.

Before recording I watched Andrew’s presentation at the MIT Blockchain Expo where I understood nothing. Still, in this interview, we talk about math, signature technology, Bitcoin fungibility and his role researching Bitcoin.

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Timestampes:

00:04:47: Introductions
00:05:26: Andrew’s recent talk at MIT
00:08:10: Exploring how atomic swaps are utilised in multisignature protocols.
00:10:36: Discussing the Liquid side chain and Block reorganizations
00:16:11: The background to ECDSA and Schnorr signature schemes
00:18:53: Historical reaction to Claus Schnorr patenting his cryptography
00:21:17: Why are Schnorr signatures not used in Bitcoin?
00:26:10: Exploring math and randomness in the Bitcoin Blockchain.
00:35:02: Andrew’s background and introduction to cryptography
00:45:13: Discovering the Bitcoin Wizard channel on the IRC
00:48:25: Why Andrew dropped out of academia to pursue Bitcoin and cryptography
00:52:26: The unsolved Hilbert Problem’s
00:54:56: Andrew’s work at Blockstream
00:59:59: The process involved in bringing new Bitcoin code to market
01:04:48: Working on fungibility and its implications on Bitcoin code
01:14:46: Discussing Mimble Wimble and why it is not coming to Bitcoin anytime soon
01:18:08: Final comments

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Helpful Links:

Connect with Andrew:
- On LinkedIn
- On Github
- On Crunchbase

Mentioned in the interview:
- Scriptless scripts
- Atomic swaps
- Maturity limit in Bitcoin
- Blockstream Liquid
- Schnorr signatures
- ECDSA
- Millennium Prize Problems
- Fungibility
- Sig Hash No Input
- Mimblewimble:
- Andrew’s proposal
- Andrew’s presentation
- Grin
- Beam

Other relevant WBD podcasts:
- WBD074: Matt Corallo on How Bitcoin Works
- WBD057: Core Developer Bryan Bishop on Building Bitcoin
- WBD053: Grin's Michael Cordner aka Yeastplume on Implementing Mimblewimble
- WBD047: Adam Back on a Decade of Bitcoin

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