Blockstream announces their first sidechain Liquid

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Details: Category: News; Published: 14 October 2015; Hits: 2102

Blockstream's Liquid is a distributed network which extends blockchain functionality and allows users rapid transfer and settlement in a separate high-volume and low-fee secure cryptographic system.

Liquid increases the security of funds and helps boost market liquidity for business models using blockchain, the Blockstream website claims. Blockstream regards itself as a bitcoin-centric company that is advancing the technology and fosters the development of the bitcoin ecosystem. A number of bitcoin exchanges and brokerages, including Bitfinex, BTCC, Kraken, Unocoin and Xapo, partner with Blockstream in the sidechain project. Blockstream are working towards collaboration with other major institutional traders and licensed exchanges.

“We further hope that this inspires others to build on these and other future improvements to the Bitcoin codebase and encourages others to take advantage of our work in both the original sidechain white paper and the implementation in Elements Project open source releases. Bitcoin’s future is bright,” the announcement of Liquid reads.

Blockstream drives innovation in the industry of open assets and smart contracts implemented into the blockchain. Sidechains are interoperable with each other and with bitcoin and can be used to develop applications based on the ledger technology. The start-up released the open source Sidechain Elements in June.

The sidechain technology enables bitcoins and other ledger assets to be transferred between multiple blockchains, which is very beneficial from the point of view of capitalisation. UBS, the largest financial corporation of Switzerland, might consider implementing bitcoin sidechains, according to the head of the UBS's technology innovation and research team Alex Batlin.

Blockstream buys GreenAddress wallet

Bitcoin infrastructure giant will support the GreenAddresse team in improving privacy and security functions and making the wallet fully compatible with Blockstream's sidechain technology.

GreenAddress' founder and former CEO Nahum Lawrence, who became the senior architect Blockstream, announced that he is very satisfied with the acquisition.

“Blockstream is not just going to need some node service that provides some functionality, but it's also going to need an interface, a wallet. It will provide an integrated solution for Blockstream customers.”

According to him, GreenAddress already supports the principal functions of Blockstream sidechain, something other wallets seem to lack. It is expected that the two technologies combined will increase the wallet users' capabilities. GreenAddress also works to develop an open source wallet library, which will be available for multiple platforms and programming languages.

Sidechains are attached to a public ledger and allow operations with bitcoins and other assets between many blockchains at once. The sidechain technology enables bitcoins and other ledger assets to be transferred between multiple blockchains, which is very beneficial from the point of view of capitalisation. To develop it, Blockstream attracted $76 mln in two investment rounds.

In October 2015, the company launched its own sidechain Liquid, which extends blockchain functionality and allows users rapid transfer and settlement in a separate high-volume and low-fee secure cryptographic system.

GreenAddress, founded in 2014, was one of the pioneers to adopt innovations such as hierarchical deterministic purses that generate new addresses for each incoming transaction and secures it with the multisignature function.

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