Adam Back - Cypherpunk, Applied Cryptographer, Inventor of Hashcash, Cofounder and CEO of Blockstream

In this episode I spend some time with Adam Back Cypherpunk, Applied Cryptographer, Inventor of Hashcash, Cofounder and CEO of Blockstream. To access comprehensive show notes, a complete guest bio and links mentioned in the episode take a look below or go to advancetechmedia.org and click the episode title.

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