Eric Lombrozo: Upgrading Bitcoin with Segregated Witness

In the midst of the heated blocksize debate one could be forgiven to think that there is very little Bitcoin developers are able to agree on. Yet, when core developer and Blockstream co-founder Pieter Wuille introduced the concept of segregated witness at the Scaling Bitcoin conference in Hong Kong most of the Bitcoin community quickly rallied behind the proposal.

Eric Lombrozo, CEO of wallet company Ciphrex and responsible for running the segregated witness testnet, joined us to discuss the proposal and its implications. Segregated witness, it turns out, does not only provide an elegant way to increase the blocksize via a soft-fork, it also solves transaction malleability and greatly simplifies updating the Bitcoin’s scripting language. It’s a crucial topic and may well enable a new wave of accelerated innovation in Bitcoin.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The various benefits of segregated witness
• The mechanics of segregated witness
• How segregated witness solves transaction malleability
• How segregated witness could increase the blocksize to 2-3MB with a soft fork
• What segregated witness means for wallet developers
• How segregated witness could facilitate development of off-chain networks such as Lightning Network
• The important difference between hard forks and soft forks
• How segregated witness will allow updates of Bitcoin’s script language via soft forks

Episode links:

• Scaling Bitcoin Talk by Pieter Wuille
• Let's Talk Bitcoin! #277 Separating Signatures with Segregated Witness
• Gavin Andresen: Segregated Witness is Cool
• Bitcoin Magazine Series on Segregated Witness Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Eric Lombrozo's company Ciphrex

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/117