Recap of Advancing Bitcoin 2020 conference

The second advancing bitcoin conference took place on February 6th and 7th 2020, during the early stages of the coronavirus epidemic. Whilst a few people travelling from Asia cancelled their ticket due to worries around the virus, attendance numbers were not affected very much and we had a good turnout.

The event was held at The Royal College of Pathologists who own a really nice new event space in London.

Day 1

In the morning talks focused on wallets and contracts. Stepan spoke about hacking hardware wallets, Andrew Chow explained the work he has been doing on the bitcoin core wallet and the creation of descriptor wallets; Andrew Poelstra explained why miniscript is so powerful and how it fits together with descriptor wallets. James Chiang spoke about his research on contract verification.

This was followed by several great talks on Signet, EasyPaySy, Coinjoins and the seriousness of privacy, and UX challenges and solutions.

In the afternoon, after the break, we had several talks on Lightning, from Val Wallace from SquareCrypto, Antoine Riard from Chaincode labs, Sergi Delgado from Pisa research, and Joost Jager from Lightning Labs.

Day 2

The second day always follows a more relaxed approach where attendees can select the workshops they would like to attend but also spend time networking or catching up on work in our open lounge area.

In the evening we have after-party with free drinks, snacks, and lightning powered computer games! Zebedee sponsored and organised a fight tournament between @nopara73 and @NicolasDorier

Even after the coronavirus epidemic of 2020, bitcoiners still need venues where they can come together to share ideas, socially connect, review code together, and feel part of a community. We're glad we can help fill that role and we're glad that a number of sponsors felt the same way. A big shoutout to our sponsors @escherapp, @koinkeep, @blockstream, @coinfloor, @zebedee, and @slushpool

Watch the full videos from all of the talks.

In September 2020 we'll announce details of the next event.