Christian Decker: Scaling Bitcoin with Duplex Micropayment Channels

Christian Decker is a PhD student at ETH Zurich, where he is currently finishing up the world’s first PhD thesis entirely about Bitcoin. The computer scientist has been part of the Bitcoin community since 2009 and just recently turned off his last miner after 6.5 years!

We talked about the current scalability debate and what his research indicated what blocksize could reasonably be handled today. We also discussed his proposal for Duplex Micropayment Channels. Like the Lightning Network, Duplex Channels use a network of payment channels to enable cheap, instant and trustless offchain transactions. The proposal, which he is currently implementing, is one of the most promising approaches to scaling Bitcoin.

Topics covered in this episode:

• How losing 9000 btc got him on the front page of the New York Times
• The scaling Bitcoin debate and what blocksize could be handled today
• How payment channels work and could be used for off-chain transactions
• The advantages Duplex Micropayment Channels have with regards to privacy
• The differences between Duplex and the Lightning Network
• Whether off-chain transactions could work on Ethereum as well

Episode links:

• Christian Decker's ETH homepage
• A Fast and Scalable Payment Network with Bitcoin Duplex Micropayment Channels [PDF]
• Bitcoin Meets Strong Consistency [PDF]
• Information Propagation in the Bitcoin Network [PDF]
• Epicenter Bitcoin Lightning Network Episode

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/106