In this latest report, we detail our key business achievements, engineering developments, and industry engagements over the past quarter, along with strategic priorities for Q2 2025.
Major Q1 2025 Highlights
- Blockstream Asset Management Funds Launched: Three new institutional-grade Bitcoin investment products announced, drawing strong early interest from hedge funds, family offices, and other allocators.
- Jade Plus Released: Our most advanced self-custody solution to date, with upgraded security, UX, and air-gapped signing via optional accessory, JadeLink.
- Tokyo Office Opened: New Japan office launched with Fulgur Ventures and Diamond Hands to deepen regional institutional engagement and Layer-2 development.
- Significant Engineering Progress: Updates across Core Lightning, Greenlight, and Liquid, including the launch of Core Lightning (CLN) v25.02, as well as Elements 23.2.5 and ELIP 200.
- Global Industry Presence: Senior leadership participation in top-tier events including iConnections, Plan B El Salvador, Hong Kong Consensus, Bitcoin Investor Week and an institutions-focused event in London featuring top finance leaders and policymakers.
- Developer & Community Outreach: Liquid bootcamp held in El Salvador and CHF 10,000 grant launched to support new Layer-2 projects at our Lugano R&D hub.
- Media Coverage: Features and interviews across major mainstream and crypto media, highlighting Blockstream’s growing influence at the intersection of Bitcoin and traditional finance.
Blockstream Finance: Institutional-Grade Innovation
Under the leadership of Blockstream’s recently-appointed CIO, former hedge fund manager Sean Bill, Blockstream Asset Management (BAM) debuted three inaugural Bitcoin-native investment funds in Q1 2025, creating one of the most significant onramps for institutional capital into Bitcoin to date.
Set to launch in Q2, these three innovative financial products—an Income Fund, USD Yield Fund, and Alpha Fund—have already drawn strong interest from hedge funds, family offices, and asset managers ahead of what is poised to be one of the biggest institutional Bitcoin investment launches of the year.
BAM’s approach aims to accelerate Bitcoin’s adoption, liquidity, and ecosystem growth—often described as the ‘Bitcoin flywheel’—representing a pivotal step in integrating Bitcoin into traditional finance at scale. The announcement of the funds drew significant global media attention, underscoring Blockstream’s growing influence in bridging Bitcoin with global capital markets.
Looking ahead, BAM will continue to focus on innovative ways to meet surging demand for secure, regulated, and institutional-grade Bitcoin investment vehicles—helping to bridge the gap between Bitcoin and traditional finance on an unprecedented scale.
Core Lightning: Expanding Lightning’s Capabilities
Q1 saw the release of Core Lightning (CLN) v25.02, which included 242 commits from 21 contributors over 68 days.
This maintenance release enhances the Lightning Network by fixing critical bugs to ensure greater reliability, adding shachain and peer basepoints to static channel backups for improved recovery, restoring blacklisted runes for better channel management, and optimizing onion message handling to boost network performance.
Additionally, BOLT12 support is nearing production, streamlining invoice handling and enabling reusable, private Lightning payments via a new BIP353 DNS payment instruction field. These improvements further solidify Core Lightning’s role as a leading solution for scalable, trust-minimized Bitcoin transactions.
Greenlight: Scaling Enterprise Lightning
A major focus for Greenlight in Q1 was the ongoing migration to a new database architecture, enabling higher transaction throughput, reducing latency for node operations, and strengthening system uptime. Once complete, upcoming webhook integrations will allow real-time client interactions, such as summoning a signer for transaction approvals or triggering an admin UI for pairing requests and BOLT12 integration. We are also nearing production deployment of CLN v24.11, which will deliver BOLT12 support for reusable, private payments.
Meanwhile, efforts continue on Lightning-on-Liquid for instant, confidential settlements, alongside ongoing improvements in payment execution reliability and speed.
Blockstream Research: Advancing Bitcoin’s Security & Scalability
Blockstream Research continues to play a critical role in shaping Bitcoin’s future, advancing cutting-edge research in scalability, security, and layer-2 technologies. Led by Andrew Poelstra—one of the world’s foremost Bitcoin cryptographers—the team remains at the forefront of developing robust, secure, and intellectually rigorous solutions for the Bitcoin ecosystem.
This quarter, in the wake of the $1.5 billion Bybit hack—the largest cryptocurrency exchange hack to date—the team published "The Risk of Expressive Smart Contracts," a deep dive into the trade-offs between programmability and security in blockchain systems.
While programmability has potential in certain contexts, Bitcoin has always distinguished itself with its emphasis on ensuring that new features do not compromise decentralization, security, or scalability. This latest groundbreaking research from the Blockstream Research team provides a timely reminder of the dangers of overly complex smart contract environments, reinforcing Blockstream’s commitment to Bitcoin’s conservative, security-first design philosophy — an especially important consideration for institutions.
As Bitcoin adoption grows, Blockstream Research remains focused on responsible innovation, contributing to the broader discussion on how to scale Bitcoin without introducing unnecessary risks.
Jade & Green: Strengthening Bitcoin Self-Custody
The launch of the all-new Jade Plus hardware wallet in Q1 marked a significant advance in Bitcoin hardware security. Representing the newest addition to the Jade lineup first unveiled in 2021, Jade Plus features an upgraded display, improved camera, and air-gapped firmware upgrades via the optional JadeLink accessory, providing additional peace of mind for security-conscious Bitcoin users.
Blockstream Green also saw significant enhancements, introducing a new Buy Bitcoin feature, which allows users to buy Bitcoin straight to self-custody directly within the app in over 200 currencies. This feature streamlines the onboarding experience and strengthens the self-custody-first approach that underpins all of Blockstream’s wallet solutions.
Additionally, Lightning on Green transitioned from experimental to Beta, bringing non-custodial Lightning payments closer to full production readiness. This evolution ensures that users can benefit from fast, low-cost transactions without relying on third-party custody.
Liquid: Expanding Bitcoin’s Financial Layer
The Liquid Network continued to gain traction in Q1.
The deployment of Elements 23.2.5 and ELIP 200 introduced DiscountCT, a protocol upgrade that reduces the cost of Confidential Transactions (CT) by up to 90%, making Liquid transactions, such as LBTC and USDT-Liquid, more cost-effective for enterprises, institutions and individual users. ELIP 201 (DustCT), released in March meanwhile, further reduces costs by lowering the default dust relay fee rate, enabling smaller value transactions as low as one sat for enhanced usability. We are also creating a new wallet-wide default to 21 sats in LWK, GDK and Elements Core.
Additionally, Blockstream launched the new Blockstream Explorer API, improving asset tracking and network transparency. Developers also benefited in Q1 with the release of Liquid Wallet Kit (LWK) 0.9.0, which brings default CT discounts, manual coin selection, and experimental AMP2 support to Liquid wallet implementations.
Looking ahead, the full deployment of Simplicity is imminent, following its testnet release in October 2024. Currently, Blockstream is in the early stages of coordinating with the Liquid Federation’s functionary operators to be Simplicity compatible, and we expect a full roll out on mainnet by end of Q2. Simplicity will provide more advanced, verifiable scripting capabilities, enhancing Liquid’s programmability while maintaining Bitcoin’s security-first approach.
The Liquid Network has continued to grow in 2025, total value locked (TVL) surpassing USD 2.5 billion towards the end of Q1, reflecting growing adoption among financial institutions and enterprises exploring Bitcoin-based tokenization and settlement solutions. As demand for Bitcoin-native financial infrastructure increases, Liquid remains a key component of extending Bitcoin beyond payments into broader capital markets applications and Blockstream’s overall mission to shape the future of finance.
Strategic Engagement & Business Development
Throughout Q1 2025, Blockstream expanded its global footprint and deepened key partnerships. A major milestone was the opening of our new Tokyo office in collaboration with Fulgur Ventures and Japan’s leading Bitcoin advisory firm, Diamond Hands—established to strengthen institutional relationships, support local developer communities, and accelerate Bitcoin adoption across Japan and throughout Asia Pacific.
Blockstream remained active also on the global conference circuit, with both Adam and Sean speaking at key global events including iConnections Miami, Plan B El Salvador, Hong Kong Consensus, Cantor Global Technology Conference, Bitcoin Investor Week and several key events in London. Highlights included Adam’s fireside chat with OKX President Hong Fang on the evolution of global Bitcoin payments at Consensus Hong Kong, and his panel at iConnections Miami alongside Galaxy Digital and Anchorage Digital on institutional adoption of digital assets.
These forums offered Blockstream an invaluable platform to advance the global conversation around Bitcoin as the future foundation of finance, as well as engage directly with asset managers, family offices, and institutional allocators on our expanding suite of institutional-grade, Bitcoin-native products and services.
We also continued to support education and grassroots innovation throughout the quarter, holding intensive Liquid bootcamps in both El Salvador and Argentina and launching a CHF 10,000 grant program to foster new Layer-2 projects at our R&D hub in Lugano, Switzerland. These initiatives reflect our ongoing commitment to building a robust Bitcoin ecosystem worldwide.
Media Highlights
Blockstream’s achievements drew widespread attention from both crypto and mainstream financial media in Q1 2025, with highlights including:
- CoinDesk’s reporting on the opening of Blockstream’s new Tokyo office and regional expansion.
- The launch of Jade Plus featured in BeInCrypto and other outlets.
- Coverage of Blockstream Asset Management’s institutional-grade Bitcoin-native funds by Forbes, CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, and others, with CIO Sean Bill providing additional insights in interviews with Bloomberg Crypto and Roxom TV.
- A series of high-profile media appearances by Adam, including his feature in Channel 4’s Seeking Satoshi documentary, interviews with CNBC Asia, CoinDesk and CoinDesk TV, and a guest spot on the Pomp Podcast.
Looking Ahead: Q2 2025 Priorities
As Blockstream enters Q2 2025, we remain focused on expanding Bitcoin’s financial infrastructure, improving Layer-2 scalability, and deepening institutional engagement.
Our priorities for the coming months include:
- Blockstream Finance: Exploring the creation of additional structured Bitcoin investment products and continuing to speak to the people who truly matter in the world of global finance about the benefits of Bitcoin as an asset class.
- Core Lightning: Deploying BOLT12 support and new network optimizations.
- Greenlight: Expanding enterprise adoption & webhook integrations.
- Liquid: Advancing Simplicity’s mainnet deployment and growing tokenized asset issuance, while continuing to nurture the Liquid ecosystem, with upcoming developer bootcamps scheduled in Italy and Bulgaria in April and May, respectively.
For more information, visit blockstream.com or to discuss any of the topics detailed in this quarter’s update, please contact press@blockstream.com or, alternatively, drop us a DM on 𝕏 @Blockstream or via LinkedIn if more convenient.