I talk with Christian Lewe from Blockstream Research. Christian is working on Simplicity, a more robust programming language designed as an alternative to Bitcoin Script.

To own Bitcoin is to be able to spend it, and the way we currently do this is with Bitcoin Script which has challenges and limitations that means it can be very unforgiving to work with, and it limits more complex transactions and arrangements because you cannot formally verify what will actually happen.

Simplicity seeks to fix this.

The project that has been in the works for over ten years and has been described by Adam Back as “the last soft fork”. There is some technical nuance to this statement, but as Christian shares, enabling simplicity could bypass a lot of the contentious soft fork discussions about things like covenants as this functionality is possible with Simplicity.

We talk about the proof of work and low time preference of Simplicity, as well as the plans to launch on the Liquid testnet and mainnet to validate the project through actual financial use before an eventual proposal to bring it into Bitcoin.