ProfessorRussell O'Connor
LevelExpert
Duration
10 hours
PriceFree
Course IDSCR403
Ratings
Delving Into Simplicity
FreeOnline
Goal: Master the design philosophy, type system, and full lifecycle of Simplicity
Description
Delving Into Simplicity
A deep dive into the theory and design decisions behind the Simplicity language, based on the complete five-part "Delving Simplicity" article series by Dr. Russell O'Connor, the creator of Simplicity at Blockstream Research. This course explains why Simplicity was designed the way it was, not how to write it.
The course follows Dr. O'Connor's articles through the three fundamental ways of combining computations, the minimal type system and its completeness theorem, the construction of practical data types and arithmetic from first principles, the careful introduction of side effects for blockchain interaction, and finally how programs are committed to addresses and redeemed on-chain.
Learning path
Objectives
- Understand the three fundamental composition methods and the nine combinators that form a complete language
- Build boolean logic, arithmetic, and SHA-256 from Simplicity's minimal type system
- Grasp how the Failure and Reader side effects enable real blockchain interaction
- Learn how Simplicity programs become Taproot addresses and are redeemed with witness data
Curriculum
+-Introduction
+-Foundations of Simplicity
+-From Data Types to Programs
+-Final Section
This course is taught by Russell O'Connor
Dr. Russell O'Connor is an Infrastructure Tech Developer at Blockstream and the creator of Simplicity, a next-generation smart contract language for Bitcoin. He holds a Ph.D. in Science from Radboud University Nijmegen and a bachelor's degree in Pure Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Waterloo. His work at Blockstream Research has contributed to landmark Bitcoin innovations including Taproot. Simplicity, which he first envisioned around 2012 and detailed in his 2017 paper, was activated on the Liquid Network in July 2025 after years of formal verification and development.
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