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.

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“It feels, in some way, like Taproot is a bigger deal, but it’s because we are taking it a lot more seriously, even more seriously than we were taking things in the SegWit era. The stakes are higher.”
— Andrew Poelstra

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.