Written by Alexandra Moxin
In this episode I spend some time with Adam Back a Cypherpunk, Applied Cryptographer, the Inventor of Hashcash, co-founder and CEO of Blockstream.
We cover Adam’s background, what sparked his interest in Computer Science and cryptography and how he got started in the industry. As one of the 10 people whose research is directly cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper, it seemed appropriate to ask him how he would describe Bitcoin and what he considers its fundamental strengths.
I ask about the areas of research he is most excited about and we delve into Schnorr signatures, taproot and graftroot and how these improvements could be implemented in Bitcoin. We discuss the recent Binance hack and the talk of a re-org to recover the funds and go into detail around why Bitcoin re-orgs are a bad idea.
In closing I ask him what are the core tenants of being a cypherpunk and questions he has for our listeners. You can find and follow Adam on twitter, reach out to him with ideas on applied cryptography, use cases, design and UX improvement suggestions for Bitcoin and find out more about Blockstream.
People always ask which episode of the podcast is my favourite, it’s this one. Hope you enjoy this episode!
Show Links
- Adam Back’s bio and blog
- adam3us on twitter
- Blockstream
- Adam Back’s webpage
- Adam Back’s profile on LinkedIn
- The Bitcoin whitepaper, by Satoshi Nakamoto: courtesy of Jameson Lopp’s Bitcoin Resources Library
- Definition of Schnorr signatures, via Bitcoin wiki
- Schnorr Signature Standard for 64-byte Schnorr signatures over the elliptic curve secp256k1 (draft), by Pieter Wuille
- [bitcoin-dev] Taproot: Privacy preserving switchable scripting, by Gregory Maxwell
- Taproot: SegWit version 1 output spending rules, by Pieter Wuille
- [bitcoin-dev] Graftroot: Private and efficient surrogate scripts under the taproot assumption, by Gregory Maxwell
- Discussion thread on the viability of deep blockchain rollbacks to counter thefts, via Bitcoin StackExchange
- Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains, by Adam Back, Matt Corallo, Luke Dashjr, Mark Friedenbach, Gregory Maxwell, Andrew Miller, Andrew Poelstra, Jorge Timón, and Pieter Wuille, October 22, 2014
- Blockstream Green
- Blockstream Satellite
- Blockstream Liquid
- Accelerating Bitcoin Adoption, by Adam Back
- Talk at HodlHodl conference, Nov 2017, on “Bitcoin: Privacy & Scale”, by Adam Back
- Talk at Tel Aviv Bitcoin meetup, Feb 2014, on “Fungibility, Privacy & Identity”, by Adam Back
- Podcast on privacy, cypherpunk ideas & Bitcoin with Adam Back and Andreas Antonopoulos
- Hashcash, by Adam Back, 1997
- B-money, by Wei Dai, 1998
- Bit Gold, by Nick Szabo, 1998
- RPOW, by Hal Finney, 2005
- Bitcoin, by Satoshi Nakamoto, 2008
- A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto, by Eric Hughes
- Munitions T-shirt
- Munitions T-shirt design code
