The below is a direct excerpt of Marty’s Bent Issue #1236: “Blockstream has made some progress on signature aggregation research.” Sign up for the newsletter here.
via Blockstream
There’s currently a lot of noise out there right now. The bitcoin price is down, people are restless and a lot of attention is being drawn toward things that will have little influence on Bitcoin in the long run. Amid all of this noise, Blockstream released a blog post earlier this evening about the progress they’ve made on signature aggregation research. If it proves to be secure and worthwhile to add across the Bitcoin stack, signature aggregation could bring massive data-efficiency benefits to the network as well as open up more unique use cases via the non-interactive features it would enable.
If you’re looking to distract yourself from all of the noise out there right now or simply want to get back to basics, I highly recommend you check out the post from Blockstream and click on all of the links included in it. You’ll learn about the history of the idea, how Blockstream iterated on it, the technical details of the implementation as of right now and the benefits it could provide the network and those of us who use it. If anything, it will provide you with a reminder of the fact that Bitcoin is on the bleeding edge of computer science, cryptography and distributed systems. I advise caution because you may become increasingly bullish the further you fall down the signature aggregation rabbit hole.
Shoutout to the many unsung heroes who have been working diligently behind the scenes in relative obscurity to conduct this research. Research that may prove to have a profound impact on the way individuals interact with bitcoin and, by extension, how the global economy handles particular facets of coordination in the future. This is the stuff that really matters at the end of the day.
Go forth and grow your know.