Blockstream was founded by Bitcoin protocol developers who believe that improving Bitcoin can help cryptocurrency to reach its full potential. We remain robust champions of its core values, and we continue to support the development of Bitcoin Core, whose evolution enhances the usability of all Bitcoin projects — including our own Elements and Liquid.
Gregory Maxwell, CTO of Blockstream and a long-time contributor to Bitcoin Core, recently gave a talk at a SF-Bitcoin-Devs meetup about the updates in Bitcoin’s newest major version, 0.15, which was released on September 14, following commits from 95 different authors.
Many of the updates in 0.15 are intended to improve performance, supporting Bitcoin’s continued growth, which we expect to be even greater in the wake of SegWit. These performance improvements include a reworking of the chainstate database, the introduction of a new cache for script validation, and the addition of several other speedups. New user features also appear in 0.15, including a CLI and RPC multiwallet feature, which has been requested since 2011. Other expansions improve fee estimation and fee handling.
For more information, you can view the video of Greg’s seminar, read the transcript, or review Greg’s slides.