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Bitcoin Optech
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We provide weekly newsletters, workshops, case studies, and research for the #Bitcoin community.
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Bitcoin Optech 10 months ago
In Podcast #348 we had on Jonas Nick, Jameson Lopp, Steven Roose, Gregory Sanders, and Salvatore Ingala: - secp256k1lab - discussions about quantum computer theft and resistance - discussions about a CTV+CSFS soft fork - OP_CHECKCONTRACTVERIFY - Consensus cleanup draft BIP - And more! Catch up:
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Bitcoin Optech 10 months ago
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #350 is here: - summarizes changes to services/client software - Bitcoin Core 29.0 - issues a correction to some details from our story last week about SwiftSync - Optech Newsletter #350 Recap Changes to services and client software: - Bitcoin Knots version 28.1.knots20250305 released - PSBTv2 explorer announced - LNbits v1.0.0 released - The Mempool Open Source Project® v3.2.0 released - Coinbase MPC library released - Lightning Network liquidity tool released - Versioned Storage Service announced - Fuzz testing tool for Bitcoin nodes - Bitcoin Control Board components open-sourced Bitcoin Core 29.0 is the latest major version of the network’s predominate full node. Its release notes describe several significant improvements... Correction Last week’s newsletter story about SwiftSync contained several errors and confusing statements... Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
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Bitcoin Optech 10 months ago
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #349 is here: - describes a proposal for speeding up Bitcoin Core initial block download, with a proof-of-concept implementation that shows a roughly 5x speed up compared to Bitcoin Core’s defaults - recaps the "Stricter internal handling of invalid blocks " PR Review Meeting - Optech Newsletter #349 Recap on Riverside Sebastian Falbesoner posted to Delving Bitcoin a sample implementation and performance results for SwiftSync, an idea proposed by Ruben Somsen during a recent Bitcoin Core developers meeting and later posted to the mailing list... 'Add Fee rate Forecaster Manager' is a PR by ismaelsadeeq that upgrades the transaction fee forecasting (fee estimation) logic... Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
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Bitcoin Optech 10 months ago
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #348 is here: - links to an educational implementation of elliptic curve cryptography for Bitcoin’s secp256k1 curve - Changing consensus covering: discussions about quantum computer theft and resistance, a CTV+CSFS soft fork, OP_CHECKCONTRACTVERIFY semantics, and a consensus cleanup draft BIP - Optech Newsletter #348 Recap on Riverside Sebastian Falbesoner, Jonas Nick, and Tim Ruffing posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list to announce a Python implementation of various functions related to the cryptography used in Bitcoin... Several conversations examined how Bitcoiners could respond to quantum computers becoming powerful enough to allow stealing bitcoins... Several conversations examined various aspects of soft forking in the OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV) and OP_CHECKSIGFROMSTACK (CSFS) opcodes... Salvatore Ingala posted to Delving Bitcoin to describe the semantics of the proposed OP_CHECKCONTRACTVERIFY (CCV) opcode, link to a first draft BIP, and link to an implementation draft for Bitcoin Core... Antoine Poinsot posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a link to a draft BIP he’s written for the consensus cleanup soft fork proposal. It includes several fixes... Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
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Bitcoin Optech 10 months ago
Earlier today, nprofile1qqsf2ds69dp2ympzhtpmdd46f3w2cnfkjphtpnaesf5xs8z95vqu2xqytd0r5 and @schmidty were joined by Sjors Provoost and Antoine Poinsot to discuss Newsletter #347: - Fee-Based Spam Prevention For Lightning - Testnets 3, Testnet 4 - Taproot annexes - BIP30, BIP34, witness commitments, and the block 1,983,702 problem - Malleating any 64-byte transactions - And more! Catch up:
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Bitcoin Optech 10 months ago
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #347 is here: - describes upfront and hold fees in LN based on burnable outputs - summarizes discussion about testnets 3 and 4 - announces a plan to relay certain transactions containing taproot annexes - summarizes popular Q&A from Stack Exchange - Bitcoin Core 29.0rc2 - Optech Newsletter #347 Recap John Law posted to Delving Bitcoin the summary of a paper he’s written about a protocol nodes can use to charge two additional types of fees for forwarding payments... Sjors Provoost posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list to ask whether anyone was still using testnet3 now that testnet4 has been available for about six months... Peter Todd announced to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list his plan to update his Bitcoin Core-based node, Libre Relay, to begin relaying transactions containing taproot annexes if they follow particular rules... Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange: - Why is the witness commitment optional? - Can all consensus valid 64 byte transactions be (third party) malleated to change their size? - How long does it take for a transaction to propagate through the network? - Utility of longterm fee estimation - Why are two anchor outputs are used in the LN? - Why are there no BIPs in the 2xx range? - Why doesn’t Bech32 use the character “b”? - Bech32 error detection and correction reference implementation - How to safely spend/burn dust? - How is the refund transaction in Asymmetric Revocable Commitments constructed? - Which applications use ZMQ with Bitcoin Core? Bitcoin Core 29.0rc2 is a release candidate for the next major version of the network’s predominate full node. Please see the version 29 testing guide. Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
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Bitcoin Optech 10 months ago
Yesterday @Murch and @schmidty were joined by Matt Morehouse, Yong Yu, Alejandro De La Torre, Jan B, and Marco De Leon to discuss Newsletter #346: - LND's dynamic feerate adjustment system - DMND launching pooled mining - Bitcoin Core 29.0rc2 and testing guide - Removing checkpoints in Bitcoin Core - And more! Catch up:
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Bitcoin Optech 11 months ago
Last week @Murch and @schmidty were joined by Sindura Saraswathi, Christian Kümmerle, and Stéphan Vuylsteke to discuss Newsletter #345: - P2P traffic analysis - Research into single-path LN pathfinding - Probabilistic payments using different hash functions as an xor function - A Bitcoin Core PR Review Club on invalid blocks - Notarizing macOS and codesigning Bitcoin Core on Windows and macOS - and more… Catch up:
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Bitcoin Optech 11 months ago
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #346 is here: - summarizes a discussion about LND’s updated dynamic feerate adjustment system - summarizes changes to services/client software - Bitcoin Core 29.0rc2 - Optech Newsletter #346 Recap Matt Morehouse posted to Delving Bitcoin a description of LND’s recently-rewritten sweeper system, which determines the feerates to use for onchain transactions (including RBF fee bumps)... Changes to services and client software: - Wally 1.4.0 released - Bitcoin Core Config Generator announced - A regtest development environment container - Explora transaction visualization tool - Hashpool v0.1 tagged - DMND launching pooled mining - Krux adds taproot and miniscript - Source-available secure element announced - Nunchuk launches Group Wallet - FROSTR protocol announced - Bark launches on signet - Cove Bitcoin wallet announced Bitcoin Core 29.0rc2 is a release candidate for the next major version of the network’s predominate full node. Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter streaming on Riverside.fm and X/Twitter Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
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Bitcoin Optech 11 months ago
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #345 is here: - looks at an analysis of P2P traffic experienced by a typical full node - summarizes research into LN pathfinding - describes a new approach for creating probabilistic payments - recaps the "Stricter internal handling of invalid blocks " PR Review Meeting - Optech Newsletter #345 Recap on Riverside Developer Virtu posted to Delving Bitcoin an analysis of the network traffic generated and received by his node in four different modes: initial block download (IBD), non-listening (outbound connections only), non-archival (pruned) listening, and archival listening... Sindura Saraswathi posted to Delving Bitcoin about research she conducted with Christian Kümmerle about finding optimal paths between LN nodes for sending payments in a single part... Robin Linus replied to the Delving Bitcoin thread about probabilistic payments with a conceptually simple script that allows two parties to each commit to an arbitrary amount of entropy that can later be revealed and xored together, to produce a value that can be used to determine which one of them receives a payment... 'Stricter internal handling of invalid blocks' is a PR by mzumsande that improves the correctness of two non-consensus-critical and expensive-to-calculate validation fields by immediately updating them when a block is marked as invalid... Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
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Bitcoin Optech 11 months ago
Earlier today @Murch and @schmidty were joined by Matt Morehouse , @Matt Corallo , and @Hunter ₿eaṩt to discuss Newsletter #343: - LND vulnerability - Bitcoin Core’s priorities - Bitcoin Forking Guide - Update on BIP360 pay-to-quantum-resistant-hash (P2QRH) - Private block template marketplace to prevent centralizing MEV - and more! Catch up:
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Bitcoin Optech 11 months ago
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #344 is here: - announces the disclosure of a vulnerability affecting old versions of LND - summarizes a discussion about the Bitcoin Core Project’s priorities - Changing consensus covering: Bitcoin Forking Guide, BIP360 pay-to-quantum-resistant-hash (P2QRH) updates, and Private block template marketplace to prevent centralizing MEV - Optech Newsletter #344 Recap on Riverside Matt Morehouse posted to Delving Bitcoin to announce the responsible disclosure of a vulnerability that affected LND versions before 0.18... Several blog posts by Antoine Poinsot about the future of the Bitcoin Core project were linked in a thread on Delving Bitcoin... Anthony Towns announced to Delving Bitcoin a guide to how to build community consensus for changes to Bitcoin’s consensus rules... Developer Hunter Beast posted an update on his research into quantum resistance for BIP360 to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list... Matt Corallo and developer 7d5x9 posted to Delving Bitcoin about allowing parties to bid in public markets for selected space within miner block templates... Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
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Bitcoin Optech 11 months ago
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #343 is here: - summarizes a post about having full nodes ignore transactions that are relayed without being requested first - summarizes popular Q&A from Stack Exchange - Optech Newsletter #343 Recap on Riverside Antoine Riard posted to Bitcoin-Dev two draft BIPs that would allow a node to signal that it will no longer accept tx messages that it had not requested using an inv message, called unsolicited transactions... Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange: - What’s the rationale for how the loadtxsoutset RPC is set up? - Are there pinning attacks that RBF rule #3 makes impossible? - Unexpected locktime values - Why is it necessary to reveal a bit in a script path spend and check that it matches the parity of the Y coordinate of Q? - Why does Bitcoin Core use checkpoints?? - How does Bitcoin Core handle long reorgs? - What is discard feerate? - Policy to miniscript compiler Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #342 is here: - describes an idea for allowing mobile wallets to settle LN channels without extra UTXOs - summarizes continued discussion about adding a quality-of-service flag for LN pathfinding - summarizes changes to services/client software - adds a v3 commitments topic - Optech Newsletter #342 Recap on Riverside Bastien Teinturier posted to Delving Bitcoin about an opt-in variation of v3 commitments for LN channels that would allow mobile wallets to settle channels using the funds within the channel for all cases where theft is possible... Joost Jager posted to Delving Bitcoin to continue discussion about adding a quality of service (QoS) flag to the LN protocol to allow nodes to signal that one of their channels was highly available (HA)—able to forward payments up to a specified amount with 100% reliability... Changes to services and client software: - Ark Wallet SDK released - Zaprite adds BTCPay Server support - Iris Wallet desktop released - Sparrow 2.1.0 released - Scure-btc-signer 1.6.0 released - Py-bitcoinkernel alpha - Rust-bitcoinkernel library - BIP32 cbip32 library - Lightning Loop moves to MuSig2 V3 commitments are LN commitment transactions made using version 3 transactions adhering to the policies for TRUC, a P2A outputs, ephemeral dust, and sibling replacement... Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guests Bastien Teinturier and Joost Jager on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 17:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #341 is here: - summarizes continued discussion about probabilistic payments - describes additional opinions about ephemeral anchor scripts for LN - relays statistics about evictions from the Bitcoin Core orphan pool - announces an updated draft for a revised BIP process - recaps the "Cluster mempool: introduce TxGraph" PR Review Meeting - adds a Probabilistic payments topic - Optech Newsletter #339 Recap on Riverside Following Oleksandr Kurbatov’s post to Delving Bitcoin last week about emulating an OP_RAND opcode (see Newsletter #340), several discussions were started... Matt Morehouse replied to the thread about what ephemeral anchor script LN should use for future channels (see Newsletter #340). He expressed concerns about third-party fee griefing of transactions with P2A outputs... Developer 0xB10C posted to Delving Bitcoin with statistics about the number of transactions evicted from the orphan pools for his nodes... Mark “Murch” Erhardt posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list to announce that his draft BIP for a revised BIP process has been assigned the identifier BIP3 and is ready for additional review—possibly its last round of review before being merged and activated... 'Cluster mempool: introduce TxGraph' is a PR by sipa that introduces the TxGraph class, which encapsulates knowledge about the (effective) fees, sizes, and dependencies between all mempool transactions, but nothing else. It is part of the cluster mempool project and brings a comprehensive interface that allows interaction with the mempool graph through mutation, inspector, and staging functions... Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!