Bitcoin Core developer Pieter Wuille has migrated from Blockstream to Chaincode Labs. Wuille has been with Blockstream from the beginning, having co-founded the company in 2014. When asked about Wuille's departure, Blocksteam’s CEO Adam Back said:
“Pieter’s doing what he always has — working on Bitcoin — and he’s still a Blockstream advisor and continues to collaborate with our research team Andrew Poelstra, Jonas Nick and Tim Ruffing on muSig along with independent researchers and contributors. So I think that means Blockstream contributors on MuSig research roughly going from 4/5th to 3/5th of the people actively working on muSig cryptor.”
MuSig is a new multi-signatures standard for Bitcoin (BTC) that Blockstream has been working on for several years. According to Blockstream’s research director Andrew Poelstra, the new standard will provide greater efficiency, security, and privacy. It is also compatible with another technology that is expected to be introduced in the near future — Taproot.
Poelstra released the following statement to Cointelegraph:
"We’re happy to congratulate Pieter on joining Chaincode to expand Bitcoin research collaboration, he will continue to collaborate on several Blockstream Research projects, including Miniscript, Simplicity and MuSig. In the coming weeks and months we’ll be excited to share some results from these projects —in particular around MuSig — and look forward to continuing this in the years ahead."
With Wuille’s transfer to Chaincode, Lighting Labs becomes the single biggest supporter of Bitcoin Core developers with eight; Blockstream and Chaincode trail with seven.