Blockstream

Basics

• Location: Montreal, founded in 2014.
• The company is focused on developing bitcoin applications specifically sidechains with its Liquid, as well as other applications. Blockstream has raised $76M to date from investors including Khosla Horizons Ventures and Mosaic Ventures.
• “Creating ways to handle bitcoin micropayments and a technology called sidechan that offers firms more flexibility handling bitcoin transfers. Working with Intercontinental Exchange.”
• Blockstream is one of the largest contributors of funding for Bitcoin Core.

Projects

• Liquid sidechain; On October 12, 2015, Blockstream announced the release of its Liquid sidechain which could allow for the transfer of assets between the sidechain and the main blockchain. The firm claims over $1.8 billion in assets, including stablecoins, tokenized bonds and securities, have been issued on Liquid to date (14-10-2024), with over 3,844 BTC (around $250 million) locked onchain.
• Elements Project; Blockstream released an open source codebase and testing environment for its sidechains product to public under open source license.The Elements Project is a community effort to create and test new extensions to the Bitcoin protocol, whose early contributions include Confidential Transactions by Gregory Maxwell, and Segregated Witness by Pieter Wuille.
• Blockstream has released source code for the smart contracts on blockchain language Simplicity; Simplicity has been built to be compatible with Blockstream’s Elements platform, Elements is an open source, sidechain-capable blockchain platform
• Is open sourcing its Proof-of-Reserve tool for increased transparency; most proof-of-reserve operations require substantial transactions that put exchanges at high security risks; Blockstream's innovative tool uses common sense and UTXO values to prove the extent of reserves; however, revealing UTXO values themselves is not a safe method, a problem Blockstream is currently working to rectify
• From the Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #69 (23-10-2019):

"Blockstream Green Tor support: Version 3.2.4 of the Blockstream Green Wallet adds built-in Tor support for both iOS and Android. While Tor was supported in previous Android versions, it required a separate application whereas both Android and iOS versions are now bundled with Tor support."

• Mining Operations. From CoinDesk (28-1-2021):

"In 2019, Blockstream launched Blockstream Pool and announced it had been previously mining for a select few high-profile clients like Fidelity. Blockstream said it bought $25 million worth of mining machines from MicroBT. The machines are to be deployed through Blockstream's facilities in Canada and the U.S."

Team, Partners and Funding

Team

• Employees: 50
• List of devs can be found here.
• Allen, Christopher; co-author of IETF Transport Layer Security
• Back, Adam, president & co-founder (Was part of Hong Kong consensus)
• Corallo, Matt; co-founder, Bitcoin Core dev, Nick: BlueMatt
• Chris Decker; engineer (20-2-2020)
• Friedenbach, Mark; co-founder
• Fowler, Alexander; co-founder
• Hall, Francesca; co-founder
• Hill, Austin; co-founder. Entrepreneur, Investor, Cancer Researcher, Poker Strategist
• Hoffman, Reid; board member, is a LinkedIn founder
• Martindate, Eric
• Maxwell, Gregory; co-founder, chief tech officer. Resigned in 1-2018.
• Mow, Samson; CSO
• Poelstra, andrew
• Blockstream hired Rusty Russell, a well-known developer famous for his work on Linux kernel, to develop an implementation of the Bitcoin Lightning Network
• Silbert, Barry; through Digital Currency Group
• Svenson, Erik; co-founder
• Blockchain Capital, investor
• Strateman, Patrick; core tech engineer
• Timon, Jorge; Core Tech Engineer, Nick: jtimon
• Wilkins, Jonathan; co-founder
• Wuille, Pieter, Dr.; Co-founder blockstream, Nick: Sipa, Bitcoin Core developer, put forth the SegWit proposal and is the primary author of libsecp256k1, a library for efficient elliptic curve cryptography for use in Bitcoin.
• Fields, Cory; BTC core dev/blockstream employee, Nick: cfields
• Willen, Glenn; BTC core dev/blockstream employee, Nick: gwillen
• Sanders, Gregory; BTC core dev/blockstream employee, Nick: instagibbs
• Todd, Peter; BTC core dev/blockstream employee
• Strateman Patrick; BTC core dev/blockstream employee, Nick: phantomcircuit
• Togami, Warren; BTC core dev/blockstream employee
• Michael Minkevich; COO (14-10-2024).

Old employees

• Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn quit the Bitcoin project over a dispute involving a failed block size increase, which Hearn claimed was being opposed by Maxwell of Blockstream.
• Ben Gorlick and Johnny Dilley quited Blockstream to join with a startup called Crowd Machine (cloud computing) where they no serve as the CTO and Chief of system architecture, respectively.

Partners

• Hyperledger, Member of the initiative
• Member of Bitcoin Associated Switzerland
• Blockstream and Jack Dorsey’s Block joined forces and announced in April that they would build a solar- and battery-powered Bitcoin mine in Texas using solar and storage technology from Tesla (3-2023).

Funding

• Raised again $210M, to drive L2 growth and expend its Bitcoin treasury.
• Blockstream has raised $125 million to break further into Bitcoin mining (25-1-2023).
• Raisied $210M and acquired mining chip Manufacturer Spondoolies (24-8-2021).
• (Former) sponsor of Coin Center (as of 6-2019 not on the website anymore)
• Investors include: AME Cloud Ventures, AXA Strategic Ventures, Blockchain Capital LLC, Innovation Endeavors, Khosla Ventures, Mosaic Ventures, Reid Hoffman (Total funding: 77.5 mil)