My latest invention is SSB Playground: play with the bitcoin bug commonly called the Sighash Single Bug. I demonstrate that it lets you do a basic form of transaction introspection and even enforce restrictions on the output count of future transactions. Play with it here:

SSB Playground

Or check out the source code:

GitHub

GitHub - supertestnet/ssb_playground: Create and test SSB restrictions -- bitcoin scripts that use the Sighash Single Bug to do introspection on a transaction's input count and output count and place restrictions on them

Create and test SSB restrictions -- bitcoin scripts that use the Sighash Single Bug to do introspection on a transaction's input count and outp...

Here's a cool piece of bitcoin script lore about an obscure difference between two ways to use timelocks: "height-locked transactions are standard before they’re valid, but timestamp-locked transactions don’t become standard until they’re valid" Source:

Medium

The Bitcoin Non-standard

We’re excited to share the first guide in our new Developer Education series.  Be sure to follow the Summa publication to stay up-to-date…

Ocean Mining climbed back above 20 exahash (currently at 22.40) and put it to good use in the last 24 hours, mining 6 blocks when only 3 were expected. Mempool.space's measurements make it look like they have 44 exahash, but that's just because they got lucky today.

Here are three interesting pages on the bitcoin wiki: P2SH votes -

P2SH Votes - Bitcoin Wiki

Segwit support -

Segwit support - Bitcoin Wiki

Covenant support -

Covenants support - Bitcoin Wiki

All three gauge developer support for various fork proposals around at the time. Kind of like a vote.

Core fans lately

The United States Congressional Budget Office has published an annual projection of future US national debt every year since 1984. They also sometimes review how accurate past projections were. Unsurprisingly, they typically underestimate the debt by 7%. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55234

I looked into it further, and it looks like bitcoind actually does confiscate some pre-P2SH outputs. For the sake of "simplicity," it applies the p2sh rules to all transactions in all blocks (including pre-P2SH blocks) except ones occurring in one specific block that the devs made a single exception for. Thus, the other exceptional outputs are now unspendable. Source:

GitHub

bitcoin/src/validation.cpp at 13891a8a685d255cb13dd5018e3d5ccc18b07c34 · bitcoin/bitcoin

Bitcoin Core integration/staging tree. Contribute to bitcoin/bitcoin development by creating an account on GitHub.

View quoted note →

Interesting, was the P2SH upgrade confiscatory?

Bitcoin Stack Exchange

Did the P2SH BIP-0016 make some Bitcoin unspendable?

The P2SH feature currently in use was introduced to Bitcoin in 2012 with BIP-0016.
It was successfully activated on 2012-04-01 with block 17380...

One of the things I like about bip143 is its detailed specification of the segwit sighash algorithm, screenshot attached. Why isn't there a bip that outlines the corresponding specification for pre-segwit (legacy) transactions?

My latest invention is Lotto Miner, a webapp where you can attempt to mine a bitcoin block in your browser and put the block reward directly in a bitcoin address of your choice. You can also mine on regtest, where you are more likely to succeed. Try it here:

Lotto Miner

Video demo: The difficulty setting is low at first, but you can increase it til it matches that of the real bitcoin network. Raising the difficulty will take increasingly more work and, probably, more time. The source code is:

GitHub

GitHub - supertestnet/lotto_miner: Playground for solo-mining bitcoin on regtest and mainnet

Playground for solo-mining bitcoin on regtest and mainnet - supertestnet/lotto_miner

I made this to help folks learn how bitcoin's difficulty assessment algorithm works and gain an appreciation for how much work goes into mining bitcoin blocks. Also, I'm not aware of any open source tools for creating custom bitcoin block templates on regtest, and this is a starting point for such a tool. The codebase is pretty small and since it produces valid regtest blocks, devs should be able to customize it to suit their regtest needs. Try it out and have fun!

Lotto Miner