The most valuable blockchain & crypto person

Who’s Adam Back?

Adam is a famous British cryptographer who invented Hashcash in 2002, the proof-of-work algorithm used for decentralized mining in Bitcoin back in the 1990s. He has a computer science Ph.D. from University of Exeter. In 1997, Back invented the Hashcash system, which operates as a digital postage stamp and which makes mass spam mailings economically ineffective. He worked as e-cash consultant at Nokia and Credentica (acquired by Microsoft in 2007). He has been working as a consultant in Cypherspace Internet Security, as applied cryptographer and Bitcoin consultant.

The contribution of Adam Back to the cryptocurrency industry and blockchain technology is really huge. In some ways, he played an important role in the creation of bitcoin himself. Almost 10 years ago in the announcement of the original Bitcoin White Paper Satoshi Nakamoto noted that new coins will be generated using the previously described Proof-of-Work algorithm. In addition, Adam Back is co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, bringing together the most experienced and productive developers of Bitcoin Core — Gregory Maxwell, Peter Wille and Matt Corallo.

Today he is 47-year old CEO of Blockstream, a company that seeks to further the development of bitcoin and blockchain technology, one of a number of institutions that provide funding for the development of Bitcoin Core.

The company was launched in 2014 in San Francisco, it’s focused on developing bitcoin applications, specifically sidechains. In October 2014 Blockstream released the official documentation of a sidechain (a blockchain that runs in parallel to the main blockchain). In June 2015 they launched the Elements — first working release of the sidechains. In October 2015 the Liquid protocol was launched. This protocol makes bitcoin exchanges interoperable.

In 2016 Adam Back was announced as Blockstream’s new CEO. Then the company joined a Hyperledger, the open-source business blockchain consortium, led by the Linux Foundation, and in July announced the purchase of the popular bitcoin wallet GreenAddress.

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Blockstream has raised $151M to date from investors including Khosla Ventures, Horizons Ventures, DG Lab Fund, etc.

Photo: Pavel Sinagl, Paralelni Polis

Blockstream and Lightning Network

At the current stage, Adam Back is working on the development of mechanisms for the Lightning Network, a payment protocol that allows solving the scalability problem of the bitcoin network. Using the Lightning Network, you can reduce transaction costs in the network, provide a higher level of user privacy. In addition, the Lightning Network is not only a solution to bitcoin problems, but it can also unite different networks through atomic swaps.

At the end of 2017 the Blockstream and Lightning Labs teams had achieved compatibility of their Lightning Network implementations, and the protocol itself had been updated to version 1.0. The exact timing of the launch of the Lightning Network in the main bitcoin network (bitcoin 1.0) is still unknown, and before that beta releases of applications will be required. In fact, if you manage to fully run the Lightning Network, the interest in bitcoin as an asset will again increase, because the average number of transactions on the network will increase immediately, the commission for transactions will decrease.

Adam Back and his team have already managed to release several applications based on the Lightning Network.

Few weeks ago Blockstream released seven Lightning Apps (LApps), all built by independent developer Nadav Ivgi using Lightning Charge. They cover a wide variety of commerce use cases, and are usable by web developers with a wide variety of experience. The breadth of these LApps just hints at the endless possibilities made available by the Lightning Network as it moves toward full production release. Ok, let’s list the applications!

Vendor Shopping LApps

• Nanopos — a simple point-of-sale system for fixed-price goods. Vendors can sell physical items in-person and accept Lightning payments instantly via a simple graphical display.
• WooCommerce Lightning Gateway — a comprehensive e-commerce application that integrates with stock-management and order-tracking systems.

Content Creator LApps

• FileBazaar — a system for selling files such as documents, images, and videos.
• Lightning Publisher for WordPress — a patronage model for unlocking WordPress blog entries.

Micropayment LApps

• Paypercall — a programmer’s toolkit for Lightning that enables micropayments for individual API calls.
• Ifpaytt — an extension of paypercall that allows web developers using IFTTT to request payments for service usage.

Reimagined Technology LApps

• Lightning Jukebox — a video jukebox that enables users to request songs (or videos) for a micropayment. It does so by linking YouTube videos to a Lightning Charge powered payment system. The result is a simple proof-of-concept that demonstrates how an anachronistic device, like a jukebox, can be reimagined using cutting edge technology.
• Nanotip — a simple tip jar, rebuilt to issue Lightning Network invoices.

Photo: Logo Blockstream

Adam Back on: Twitter, Bitcointalk, Personal website