Bitcoin Optech newsletter #288 is here:
- announces the disclosure of a block stalling bug in Bitcoin Core affecting LN
- relays a concern about how to securely open new zero-conf channels with version 3 relay
- describes a contract protocol rule when allowing an external party to contribute an input to a tx
- summarizes discussions about a proposal for new tx replacement rules to avoid pinning
- provides a brief update on the mailing list
- #288 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/02/07/
Eugene Siegel announced to Delving Bitcoin a bug in Bitcoin Core he had responsibly disclosed almost three years ago. Bitcoin Core 22 and higher contain fixes for the bug, but many people are still running affected versions...
Matt Corallo posted to Delving Bitcoin to discuss how to securely allow zero-conf channel opening when the proposed v3 transaction relay policy is being used...
Bastien Teinturier posted to Delving Bitcoin to describe an easy-to-overlook requirement for protocols where a third party contributes an input to a transaction whose txid must not change after a different user contributes a signature to the transaction...
Peter Todd posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a proposal for a set of transaction replacement policies that can be used even when existing replace-by-fee (RBF) policies won’t allow a transaction to be replaced...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/02/07/#proposal-for-replace-by-feerate-to-escape-pinning
As of this writing, the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list is no longer accepting new emails as part of the process of migrating it to a different list server. Optech will provide an update when the migration is complete.
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/02/07/#bitcoin-dev-mailing-list-migration-update
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guest Bastien Teinturier on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #287 is here:
- describes a proposal to allow replacement of v3 transactions using RBF rules to ease the transition to cluster mempool
- summarizes an argument against OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY based on it commonly requiring exogenous fees
- summarizes popular Q&A from Stack Exchange
- adds a Fee sourcing topic
- adds a Simple taproot channels topic
- Optech Newsletter #287 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/31/
Gloria Zhao posted to Delving Bitcoin about allowing a transaction to replace a related transaction in the mempool even if there’s no conflict between the two transactions...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/31/#kindred-replace-by-fee
Peter Todd posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list an adaptation of his argument against exogenous fees (see Newsletter #284) applied to the OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY proposal...
Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange:
- How does block synchronization work in Bitcoin Core today?
- How does headers-first prevent disk-fill attack?
- Is BIP324 v2transport redundant on Tor and I2P connections?
- What’s a rule of thumb for setting the maximum number of connections?
- Why isn’t the upper bound (+2h) on the block timestamp set as a consensus rule?
- Sigop count and its influence on transaction selection?
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/31/#selected-qa-from-bitcoin-stack-exchange
Fee sourcing refers to the decisions made by designers of committed transactions (such as presigned transactions) about what sources of funds they’ll use for paying transaction fees...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/topics/fee-sourcing/
Simple taproot channels are LND funding and commitment transactions that use taproot (P2TR) with support for MuSig2 scriptless multisignature signing when both parties are cooperating...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/topics/simple-taproot-channels/
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guests Gloria Zhao and Brandon Black on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #285 is here:
- discloses a past vulnerability affecting Core Lightning
- announces two new soft fork proposals
- provides an overview of the cluster mempool proposal
- relays information about an updated specification and implementation of transaction compression
- summarizes a discussion about Miner Extractable Value (MEV) in non-zero ephemeral anchors
- adds an Ark topic
- Optech Newsletter #285 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/17/
Matt Morehouse used Delving Bitcoin to announce a vulnerability he had previously responsibly disclosed that affected Core Lightning versions 23.02 through 23.05.2...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/17/#disclosure-of-past-vulnerability-in-core-lightning
Brandon Black posted to Delving Bitcoin details about a soft fork that combines previous proposals for OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV) and OP_CHECKSIGFROMSTACK (CSFS) with a new proposal for an OP_INTERNALKEY that places the taproot internal key on the stack...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/17/#new-lnhance-combination-soft-fork-proposed
Chris Stewart posted a draft BIP to Delving Bitcoin for enabling 64-bit arithmetic operations on Bitcoin in a future soft fork. Bitcoin currently only allows 32-bit operations...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/17/#proposal-for-64-bit-arithmetic-soft-fork
Suhas Daftuar posted a summary of the cluster mempool proposal to Delving Bitcoin. Optech attempted to summarize the current state of cluster mempool discussion in Newsletter #280 but we would strongly recommend reading the overview by Daftuar, who is one of the architects of the proposal...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/17/#overview-of-cluster-mempool-proposal
Tom Briar posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list an updated draft specification and proposed implementation of compressed Bitcoin transactions...
Gregory Sanders posted to Delving Bitcoin to discuss concerns about ephemeral anchor outputs that contain more than 0 satoshis...
Ark is a trustless joinpool-style protocol where a large number of users share a UTXO by accepting a counterparty as a co-signer on all transactions within a certain time period. This spreads the cost of onchain fees from using that UTXO across many users, minimizing their individual costs...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/topics/ark/
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guests Brandon Black, Chris Stewart, and Gregory Sanders on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #284 is here:
- summarizes discussion about LN anchors and elements of the v3 transaction relay proposal
- announces a research implementation of LN-Symmetry
- recaps the "Nuke adjusted time (attempt 2)" PR Review Meeting
- adds an Out-of-band fees topic
- Optech Newsletter #284 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/10/
Antoine Poinsot posted to Delving Bitcoin to foster discussion about the proposals for v3 transaction relay policy and ephemeral anchors. We’ve divided the discussion into several parts...
Gregory Sanders posted to Delving Bitcoin about a proof-of-concept implementation he made of the LN-Symmetry protocol (originally called eltoo) using a software fork of Core Lightning...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/10/#ln-symmetry-research-implementation
Nuke adjusted time (attempt 2) is a PR by Niklas Gögge that modifies a block validity check related to the block’s timestamp...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/10/#bitcoin-core-pr-review-club
Out-of-band fees are payments made directly to a specific miner (or group of miners) in exchange for confirming one or more transactions. They can be contrasted with standard in-band fees that are paid using the fee implied by the difference in a transaction’s input and output value...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/topics/out-of-band-fees/
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #283 is here:
- shares the disclosure of past vulnerabilities in LND
- summarizes a proposal for fee-dependent timelocks
- describes an idea for improving fee estimation using transaction clusters
- discusses how to specify unspendable keys in descriptors
- examines the cost of pinning in the v3 transaction relay proposal
- mentions a proposed BIP to allow descriptors to be included in PSBTs
- announces a tool that can be used with the MATT proposal to prove a program executed correctly
- looks at a proposal for allowing highly efficient group exits from a pooled UTXO
- points to new coin selection strategies being proposed for Bitcoin Core
- Optech Newsletter #283 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/03/
Niklas Gögge posted to Delving Bitcoin about two vulnerabilities he had previously responsibly disclosed, which led to fixed versions of LND being released...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/03/#disclosure-of-past-lnd-vulnerabilities
John Law posted to the Bitcoin-Dev and Lightning-Dev mailing lists with a rough proposal for a soft fork that could allow transaction timelocks to optionally only unlock (expire) when median block feerates are below a user-chosen level...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/03/#fee-dependent-timelocks
Abubakar Sadiq Ismail posted to Delving Bitcoin about using some of the tools and insights from the design of cluster mempool to improve fee estimation in Bitcoin Core...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/03/#cluster-fee-estimation
Salvatore Ingala started a discussion on Delving Bitcoin about how to allow descriptors, particularly those for taproot, to specify a key for which no private key is known (preventing spending from that key)...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/03/#how-to-specify-unspendable-keys-in-descriptors
Peter Todd posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list an analysis of the proposed v3 transaction relay policy on transaction pinning for contract protocols such as LN...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/03/#v3-transaction-pinning-costs
The SeedHammer team posted a draft BIP to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list for including descriptors in PSBTs. The main intended use seems to be encapsulating descriptors in the PSBT format for transfer between wallets, as the proposed standard allows PSBTs to omit transaction data when a descriptor is enclosed...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/03/#descriptors-in-psbt-draft-bip
Johan Torås Halseth posted to Delving Bitcoin about elftrace, a proof of concept program that can use the OP_CHECKCONTRACTVERIFY opcode from the MATT soft fork proposal to allow a party in a contract protocol to claim money if an arbitrary program executed successfully...
Salvatore Ingala posted to Delving Bitcoin a proposal that can improve multiparty contracts where several users share a UTXO, such as a joinpool or channel factory, and some of the users want to exit the contract at a time when other users are unresponsive (whether unintentionally or deliberately)...
Mark Erhardt posted to Delving Bitcoin about edge-cases users may have experienced with Bitcoin Core’s coin selection strategy and proposes two new strategies that address the edge cases by attempting to reduce the number of inputs used in wallet transactions at high feerates...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/01/03/#new-coin-selection-strategies
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guests Niklas Gögge, Antoine Riard, Abubakar Sadiq Ismail, Salvatore Ingala, and Gloria Zhao on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #282: 2023 Year-in-Review Special is here:
- notes Bitcoin developments during each month of 2023
- feature: Soft fork proposals
- feature: Security disclosures
- feature: Major releases of popular infrastructure projects
- feature: Bitcoin Optech
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/12/20/
This year saw much discussion and many proposals around potential soft forks...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/12/20/#softforks
Optech reported on three significant security vulnerabilities this year...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/12/20/#security
Optech covered major releases of popular infrastructure projects throughout the year...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/12/20/#releases
In Optech’s sixth year, we published 51 weekly newsletters, published a 10-part series about mempool policy, and added 15 new pages to our topics index. Optech published over 86,000 English words about Bitcoin research and development this year, the equivalent of a 250-page book.
Every newsletter this year was accompanied by a podcast episode, totaling over 50 hours in audio form and 450,000 words in transcript form with a total of 62 different guests in 2023...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/12/20/#optech
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this special newsletter with special guest and Optech contributor Dave Harding on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to celebrate, discuss, or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #281 is here:
- summarizes a discussion about griefing liquidity advertisements
- summarizes changes to services/client software
- summarizes popular Q&A from Stack Exchange
- Optech Newsletter #281 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/12/13/
Bastien Teinturier posted to the Lightning-Dev mailing list about a potential problem with timelocks on dual-funded channels created from liquidity advertisements...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/12/13/
Changes to services and client software:
- Stratum v2 mining pool launches
- Bitcoin network simulation tool warnet announced
- Payjoin client for Bitcoin Core released
- Call for community block arrival timestamps
- Envoy 1.4 released
- BBQr encoding scheme announced
- Zeus v0.8.0 released
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/12/13/#changes-to-services-and-client-software
Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange:
- What are all the rules related to CPFP fee bumping?
- How is the total number of RBF replaced transactions calculated?
- What types of RBF exist and which one does Bitcoin Core support and use by default?
- What is the Block 1,983,702 Problem?
- What are hash functions used for in bitcoin?
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/12/13/#selected-qa-from-bitcoin-stack-exchange
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guest Bastien Teinturier on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #279 is here:
- summarizes an update to the liquidity advertisements specification
- summarizes popular Q&A from Stack Exchange
- Bitcoin Core 26.0rc3
- Optech Newsletter #279 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/29/
Lisa Neigut posted to the Lightning-Dev mailing list to announce an update to the specification for liquidity advertisements...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/29/#update-to-the-liquidity-ads-specification
Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange:
- Is Schnorr a multisignature interactive scheme?
- Is it advisable to operate a release candidate full node on mainnet?
- What is the relation between nLockTime and nSequence?
- What would happen if we provide to OP_CHECKMULTISIG more than threshold number (m) of signatures?
- What is “(mempool) policy”?
- What does Pay to Contract (P2C) mean?
- Can a non-segwit transaction be serialized in the segwit format?
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/29/#selected-qa-from-bitcoin-stack-exchange
Bitcoin Core 26.0rc3 is a release candidate for the next major version of the predominant full-node implementation. There’s a testing guide available.
https://github.com/bitcoin-core/bitcoin-devwiki/wiki/26.0-Release-Candidate-Testing-Guide
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guest Lisa Neigut on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #278 is here:
- describes a proposal to allow retrieval of LN offers using specific DNS addresses similar to lightning addresses
- summarizes changes to services/client software
- Bitcoin Core 26.0rc2 release candidate
- Optech Newsletter #278 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/22/
Bastien Teinturier posted to the Lightning-Dev mailing list about creating email-style addresses for LN users in a way that takes advantage of the features of the offers protocol...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/22/#offers-compatible-ln-addresses
Changes to services and client software:
- BitMask Wallet 0.6.3 released
- Opcode documentation website announced
- Athena Bitcoin adds Lightning support
- Blixt v0.6.9 released
- Durabit whitepaper announced
- BitStream whitepaper announced
- BitVM proof of concepts
- Bitkit adds taproot send support
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/22/#changes-to-services-and-client-software
Bitcoin Core 26.0rc2 is a release candidate for the next major version of the predominant full-node implementation. There’s a testing guide available.
https://github.com/bitcoin-core/bitcoin-devwiki/wiki/26.0-Release-Candidate-Testing-Guide
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guests Dave Harding, Bastien Teinturier, and Robin Linus on Twitter Spaces today (Wednesday) at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #277 is here:
- describes an update to the proposal for ephemeral anchors
- includes a contributed field report that outlines miniscript's ecosystem adoption
- provides Bitcoin Core 26.0rc2 testing materials
- Optech Newsletter #277 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/15/
Gregory Sanders posted to the Delving Bitcoin forum about a tweak to the ephemeral anchors proposal. That proposal would allow transactions to include a zero-value output with an anyone-can-spend output script...
Field Report: A Miniscript Journey
Antoine Poinsot from Wizardsardine describes their perspectives on miniscript adoption
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/15/#field-report-a-miniscript-journey
Bitcoin Core 26.0rc2 is a release candidate for the next major version of the predominant full node implementation. There’s a testing guide and a scheduled meeting of the Bitcoin Core PR Review Club dedicated to testing on 15 November 2023.
https://github.com/bitcoin-core/bitcoin-devwiki/wiki/26.0-Release-Candidate-Testing-Guide
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/15/#bitcoin-core-26-0rc2
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guests Dave Harding, Gregory Sanders, Antoine Poinsot, and Max Edwards on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #276 is here:
- announces an upcoming change to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list
- briefly summarizes a proposal to allow aggregating multiple HTLCs together
- recaps the "Fee Estimator updates from Validation Interface/CScheduler thread" PR Review Meeting
- Bitcoin Core 26.0rc2 release candidate
- Optech Newsletter #276 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/08/
Administrators for the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list announced that the organization hosting the list plans to cease hosting any mailing lists after the end of the year.
The administrators sought feedback from the community about options...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/08/#mailing-list-hosting
Johan Torås Halseth posted to the Lightning-Dev mailing list a suggestion for using a covenant to aggregate multiple HTLCs into a single output that could be spent all at once if a party knew all the preimages...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/08/#htlc-aggregation-with-covenants
'Fee Estimator updates from Validation Interface/CScheduler thread' is a PR by Abubakar Sadiq Ismail (ismaelsadeeq) that modifies the way the transaction fee estimator data is updated. It moves fee estimator updates from occurring synchronously during mempool updates to instead occur asynchronously...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/08/#bitcoin-core-pr-review-club
Bitcoin Core 26.0rc2 is a release candidate for the next major version of the predominant full node implementation.
There’s a scheduled meeting of the Bitcoin Core PR Review Club dedicated to testing on 15 November 2023.
https://bitcoincore.reviews/v26-rc-testing
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guests Johan Torås Halseth and Abubakar Ismail on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #275 is here:
- follows up on several recent discussions about proposed changes to Bitcoin’s scripting language
- LDK 0.0.118, Rust Bitcoin 0.31.1 releases
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/01/
There were several replies on the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list to proposed scripting change discussions we’ve previously covered.
Anthony Towns compares Rusty
Russell’s approach to other approaches specifically for covenant-based vaults and finds it unappealing.
Several people replied to Ethan Heilman’s post announcing a proposed BIP for OP_CAT...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/11/01/#continued-discussion-about-scripting-changes
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #274 is here:
- describes the replacement cycling attack against HTLCs used in LN and other systems, examines the mitigations deployed, and summarizes proposals for additional mitigations
- notes a bug affecting a Bitcoin Core RPC
- describes research into covenants with minimal changes to Bitcoin Script
- announces a proposed BIP for an OP_CAT opcode
- summarizes popular Q&A from Stack Exchange
- Optech Newsletter #274 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/25/
As briefly mentioned in last week’s newsletter, Antoine Riard posted to the Bitcoin-Dev and Lightning-Dev mailing lists about a responsibly disclosed vulnerability affecting all LN implementations.
It’s possible to use transaction replacement to remove one or more inputs of a multi-input transaction from node mempools...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/25/#replacement-cycling-vulnerability-against-htlcs
Several mitigations have been deployed by LN implementations for replacement cycling...
There have been over 40 separate posts made to the Bitcoin-Dev and Lightning-Dev mailing lists in response to the disclosure of the replacement cycling attack. Suggested responses included proposed additional mitigations...
Fabian Jahr posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list to announce that a bug had been discovered in Bitcoin Core’s calculation of the hash of the current UTXO set...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/25/#bitcoin-utxo-set-summary-hash-replacement
Rusty Russell posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a link to some research he has performed about using a few simple new opcodes to allow a script being executed in a transaction to inspect the output scripts being paid in that same transaction, a powerful form of introspection...
Ethan Heilman posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a proposed BIP to add an OP_CAT opcode to tapscript...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/25/#proposed-bip-for-op-cat
Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange:
- How does the Branch and Bound coin selection algorithm work?
- Why is each transaction broadcast twice in the Bitcoin network?
- Why are OP_MUL and OP_DIV disabled in Bitcoin?
- Why are hashSequence and hashPrevouts computed separately?
- Why does Miniscript add an extra size check for hash preimage comparisons?
- How can the next block fee be less than the mempool purging fee rate?
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/25/#selected-qa-from-bitcoin-stack-exchange
Bitcoin Core 26.0rc1 is a release candidate for the next major version of the predominant full node implementation...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/25/#bitcoin-core-26-0rc1
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guests Fabian Jahr and Ethan Heilman on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #273 is here:
- mentions a recent security disclosure affecting LN users
- describes a paper about making payments contingent on the result of running arbitrary programs
- announces a proposed BIP to add fields to PSBTs for MuSig2
- summarizes changes to services/client software
- Bitcoin Core 24.2rc2 and Bitcoin Core 25.1rc1 release candidates
- Optech Newsletter #273 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/18/
Antoine Riard posted to the Bitcoin-Dev and Lightning-Dev mailing lists the full disclosure of an issue he had previously responsibly disclosed to developers working on the Bitcoin protocol and various popular LN implementations...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/18/#security-disclosure-of-issue-affecting-ln
Robin Linus posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a paper he’s written about BitVM, a combination of methods that allows bitcoins to be paid to someone who successfully proves that an arbitrary program executed successfully. Notably, this is possible on Bitcoin today—no consensus change is required...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/18/#payments-contingent-on-arbitrary-computation
Andrew Chow posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list with a draft BIP, partly based on prior work by Sanket Kanjalkar, for adding several fields to all versions of PSBTs for the “keys, public nonces, and partial signatures produced with MuSig2.”
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/18/#proposed-bip-for-musig2-fields-in-psbts
Bitcoin Core 24.2rc2 and Bitcoin Core 25.1rc1 are release candidates for maintenance versions of Bitcoin Core.
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/18/#bitcoin-core-24-2rc2
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guests Robin Linus and Antoine Poinsot on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #272 is here:
- links to a specification for a proposed OP_TXHASH opcode
- recaps the "Type-safe transaction identifiers" PR Review Meeting
- Bitcoin Core #27596 and the assumeutxo project
- Bitcoin Core #28331 and the BIP324 version 2 encrypted P2P transport project
- Optech Newsletter #272 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/11/
Steven Roose posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a draft BIP for a new OP_TXHASH opcode. The idea behind this opcode has been discussed before but this is the first specification of the idea...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/11/#specification-for-op-txhash-proposed
'Type-safe transaction identifiers' is a PR by Niklas Gögge (dergoegge) that improves type safety by introducing separate types for txid (the transaction identifier or hash that doesn’t include the segwit witness data) and wtxid...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/11/#bitcoin-core-pr-review-club
Bitcoin Core #27596 finishes the first phase of the assumeutxo project, containing all the remaining changes necessary to both use an assumedvalid snapshot chainstate and do a full validation sync in the background...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/11/#bitcoin-core-27596
Bitcoin Core #28331 adds support for version 2 encrypted P2P transport as specified in BIP324. The feature is currently disabled by default but can be enabled using the `-v2transport` option...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/11/#bitcoin-core-28331
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guests Steven Roose, Gloria Zhao, and James O'Beirne on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #271 is here:
- summarizes a proposal for remotely controlling LN nodes using a hardware signing device - describes privacy-focused research and code for allowing LN forwarding nodes to dynamically split LN payments - looks at a proposal for improving LN liquidity by allowing groups of forwarding nodes to pool funds separately from their normal channels - Optech Newsletter #271 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/04/
Bastien Teinturier posted to the Lightning-Dev mailing list about a proposed BLIP that would specify how a user could send signed commands to their LN node from a hardware signing device (or any other wallet)...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/04/#secure-remote-control-of-ln-nodes
Gijs van Dam posted to the Lightning-Dev mailing list about a plugin he’s written for Core Lightning and some research he’s performed related to it. The plugin allows forwarding nodes to tell their peers that they support payment splitting and switching (PSS)...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/04/#payment-splitting-and-switching
ZmnSCPxj posted to the Lightning-Dev mailing list a suggestion for what he calls sidepools. This would involve groups of forwarding nodes working together to deposit funds in a multiparty state contract—an offchain contract (that is anchored onchain similar to an LN channel) that would allow funds to be moved between the participants by updating the offchain contract state...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/10/04/#pooled-liquidity-for-ln
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guest Gijs van Dam on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #270 is here:
- describes a proposal to use covenants to significantly improve LN’s scalability
- summarizes popular Q&A from Stack Exchange
- Optech Newsletter #270 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/09/27/
John Law posted to the Bitcoin-Dev and Lightning-Dev mailing lists the summary of a paper he’s written about creating very large channel factories using covenants and managing the resultant channels using adaptations of several previous protocols he’s described...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/09/27/#using-covenants-to-improve-ln-scalability
Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange:
- How did peer discovery work in Bitcoin v0.1?
- Could reorgs cause Bitcoin to break because of the 2-hour block time restriction?
- Is there a way to download blocks from scratch without downloading block headers first?
- Where is the 21 million hard cap stated? - Are blocks containing non-standard transactions relayed through the network?
- When does Bitcoin Core allow you to “Abandon transaction”?
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/09/27/#selected-qa-from-bitcoin-stack-exchange
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guest Anthony Towns on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #269 is here:
- shares the announcement of an upcoming research event
- summarizes changes to services/client software
- Optech Newsletter #269 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/09/20/
Sergi Delgado Segura and Clara Shikhelman posted to the Bitcoin-Dev and Lightning-Dev mailing lists to announce a Bitcoin Research Day event to be held in New York City on October 27th...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/09/20/#bitcoin-research-event
Changes to services and client software:
- Bitcoin-like Script Symbolic Trace (B’SST) released
- STARK header chain verifier demo
- JoinMarket v0.9.10 released
- BitBox adds miniscript
- Machankura announces additive batching feature
- SimLN Lightning simulation tool
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/09/20/#changes-to-services-and-client-software
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guest Sergi Delgado Segura on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #268 is here:
- links to draft specifications related to taproot assets - describes a summary of several alternative message protocols for LN that can help enable the use of PTLCs - recaps the BIP324 "Transport abstraction" PR Review Meeting - adds a Client-side validation topic - Optech Newsletter #268 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/09/13/
Olaoluwa Osuntokun posted separately to the Bitcoin-Dev and Lightning-Dev mailing lists about the Taproot Assets client-side validation protocol. To the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list, he announced seven draft BIPs...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/09/13/#specifications-for-taproot-assets
As the first LN implementation with experimental support for channels using P2TR and MuSig2 is expected to be released soon, Greg Sanders posted to the Lightning-Dev mailing list a summary of several different previously-discussed changes to LN messages to allow them to support sending payments with PTLCs instead of HTLCs...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/09/13/#ln-messaging-changes-for-ptlcs
'Transport abstraction' is a recently-merged PR by Pieter Wuille (sipa) that introduces a transport abstraction (interface class). This PR is part of the BIP324 Version 2 P2P Encrypted Transport Protocol project...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/09/13/#bitcoin-core-pr-review-club
Client-side validation protocols allow a Bitcoin transaction to commit to some data whose validity is determined separate from the validity of the transaction under Bitcoin’s consensus rules. The client-side validation can take advantage of consensus rules, such as only allowing an output to be spent once within a valid block chain, but it may also impose additional rules known only to those interested in the validation...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/topics/client-side-validation/
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guests Olaoluwa Osuntokun, Greg Sanders, and Pieter Wuille on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #267 is here:
- describes a new technique for compressing Bitcoin transactions
- summarizes an idea for privacy-enhanced transaction cosigning
- Optech Newsletter #267 Recap on Twitter Spaces
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/09/06/
Tom Briar posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a draft specification and proposed implementation of compressed Bitcoin transactions. Smaller transactions would be more practical to relay through bandwidth constrained mediums, such as by satellite or through steganography...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/09/06/#bitcoin-transaction-compression
Nick Farrow posts to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list about how a scriptless threshold signature scheme like FROST could improve the privacy of people who use co-signing services...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2023/09/06/#privacy-enhanced-co-signing
Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guest Tom Briar on Twitter Spaces Thursday at 15:00 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!