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Newsletters

Dec 20, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #334: 2024 Year-in-Review Special
The seventh annual Bitcoin Optech Year-in-Review special summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2024.
Dec 13, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #333
This week’s newsletter describes a vulnerability that allowed stealing from old versions of various LN implementations, announces a deanonymization vulnerability affecting Wasabi and related software, summarizes a post and discussion about LN channel depletion, links to a poll for opinions about selected covenant proposals, describes two types of incentive-based pseudo-covenants, and references summaries of the periodic in-person Bitcoin Core developer meeting. Also included are our regular sections summarizing a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, listing changes to services and client software, linking to popular Bitcoin Stack Exchange questions and answers, announcing new releases and release candidates, and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Dec 6, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #332
This week’s newsletter announces the disclosure of a transaction censorship vulnerability and summarizes discussion about the consensus cleanup soft fork proposal. Also included are our regular sections announcing new releases and release candidates and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 29, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #331
This week’s newsletter summarizes several recent discussions about a Lisp dialect for Bitcoin scripting and includes our regular sections with descriptions of popular questions and answers on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Nov 22, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #330
This week’s newsletter summarizes a proposed change to the LN specification to allow pluggable channel factories, links to a report and a new website for examining transactions on the default signet that use proposed soft forks, describes an update to the LNHANCE multi-part soft fork proposal, and discusses a paper about covenants based on grinding rather than consensus changes. Also included are our regular sections summarizing recent changes to services, client software, and popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 15, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #329
This week’s newsletter summarizes a new offchain payment resolution protocol and links to papers about potential IP-layer tracking and censorship of LN payments. Also included are announcements of new releases and release candidates (including security critical updates for BTCPay Server) and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 8, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #328
This week’s newsletter describes a vulnerability affecting old versions of Bitcoin Core and includes our regular sections summarizing a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcing new releases and release candidates, and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 1, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #327
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal for timeout tree channel factories and summarizes a draft BIP for proofs of discrete log equivalence to be used when generating silent payments. Also included are our regular sections with announcements of new software releases and descriptions of notable changes made to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Oct 25, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #326
This week’s newsletter summarizes updates to a proposal for new LN channel announcements and describes a BIP for sending silent payments with PSBTs. Also included are our regular sections with popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Oct 18, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #325
This week’s newsletter looks at summaries of some of the topics discussed at a recent LN developer meeting. Also include are our regular sections with descriptions of changes to popular clients and services, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Oct 11, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #324
This week’s newsletter announces three vulnerabilities affecting old versions of the Bitcoin Core full node, announces a separate vulnerability affecting old versions of the btcd full node, and links to a contributed Optech guide describing how to use multiple new P2P network features added in Bitcoin Core 28.0. Also included are our regular sections summarizing a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Oct 4, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #323
This week’s newsletter announces a planned security disclosure and includes our regular sections describing new releases, release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 27, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #322
This week’s newsletter announces a fixed vulnerability affecting older versions of Bitcoin Core, provides an update on hybrid channel jamming mitigation, summarizes a paper about more efficient and private client-side validation, and announces a proposal to update the BIP process. Also included are our regular sections summarizing top questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcing new releases and release candidates, and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 20, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #321
This week’s newsletter links to a proof-of-concept implementation for proving in zero-knowledge that an output is part of the UTXO set, describes one new and two previous proposals for allowing offline LN payments, and summarizes research about DNS seeding for non-IP network addresses. Also included are our regular sections describing changes to clients and services, announcing new releases and release candidates, and summarizing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 13, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #320
This week’s newsletter announces a new testing tool for Bitcoin Core and briefly describes a DLC-based loan contract. Also included are our regular sections summarizing a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club, announcing new releases and release candidates, and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 6, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #319
This week’s newsletter summarizes a proposal for allowing Stratum v2 pool miners to receive compensation for the transaction fees contained in the block templates they turn into shares, announces a research fund investigating the proposed OP_CAT opcode, and describes a discussion about mitigating merkle tree vulnerabilities with or without a soft fork. Also included are our regular sections announcing new releases and release candidates as well as describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 30, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #318
This week’s newsletter announces a new mailing list to discuss Bitcoin mining. Also included are our regular sections summarizing popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of recent changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 23, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #317
This week’s newsletter summarizes discussion about an anti-exfiltration protocol that only requires one round trip of communication between a wallet and a signing device. Also included are our regular sections describing updates to clients and services, announcing new releases and release candidates, and summarizing recent changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 16, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #316
This week’s newsletter describes a new time warp that’s particularly consequential for the new testnet4, summarizes discussion about proposed mitigations for onion message denial-of-service concerns, seeks feedback on a proposal to allow LN payers to optionally identify themselves, and announces a major change to Bitcoin Core’s build system that could affect downstream developers and integrators. Also included are our regular sections announcing new releases and release candidates and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 9, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #315
This week’s newsletter announces the Dark Skippy fast seed exfiltration attack, summarizes discussion about block withholding attacks and proposed solutions, shares statistics about compact block reconstruction, describes a replacement cycling attack against transactions with pay-to-anchor outputs, mentions a new BIP specifying threshold signing with FROST, and relays an announcement of an improvement to Eftrace that allows it to opportunistically verify zero-knowledge proofs using two proposed soft forks.
Aug 2, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #314
This week’s newsletter announces the disclosure of two vulnerabilities affecting older versions of Bitcoin Core and summarizes a proposed approach to optimizing miner transaction selection when cluster mempool is in use. Also included are our regular sections announcing new releases and release candidates and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jul 26, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #313
This week’s newsletter summarizes a wide-ranging discussion about free relay and fee-bumping upgrades in Bitcoin Core. Also included are our regular sections sharing popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcing new releases and release candidates, and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jul 19, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #312
This week’s newsletter describes a distributed key generation protocol for the FROST scriptless threshold signature scheme and links to a comprehensive introduction to cluster linearization. Also included are our regular sections describing recent changes to clients, services, and popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jul 12, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #311
This week’s newsletter includes our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jul 5, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #310
This week’s newsletter summarizes the disclosure of 10 vulnerabilities affecting old versions of Bitcoin Core and describes a proposal to allow BOLT11 invoices to include blinded paths. Also included are our regular sections announcing new releases and release candidates and summarizing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jun 28, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #309
This week’s newsletter summarizes research into estimating the likelihood that an LN payment is feasible. Also included are our regular sections with descriptions of popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jun 21, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #308
This week’s newsletter announces the disclosure of a vulnerability affecting old versions of LND and summarizes continued discussion about PSBTs for silent payments. Also included are our regular sections describing recent changes to services and client software, announcing new releases and release candidates, and summarizing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jun 14, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #307
This week’s newsletter announces a draft BIP for a quantum-safe Bitcoin address format and includes our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jun 7, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #306
This week’s newsletter announces an upcoming disclosure of vulnerabilities affecting older versions of Bitcoin Core, describes a draft BIP for a new version of testnet, summarizes a proposal for covenants based on functional encryption, examines an update to the proposal for performing 64-bit arithmetic in Bitcoin Script, links to a script for validating proof-of-work on signet with the OP_CAT opcode, and looks at a proposed update to the BIP21 specification of bitcoin: URIs. Also included are our regular sections announcing new releases and release candidates, plus summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 31, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #305
This week’s newsletter describes a proposed light client protocol for silent payments, summarizes two new proposed descriptors for taproot, and links to a discussion about whether opcodes with overlapping features should be added in a soft fork. Also included are our regular sections with popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 24, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #304
This week’s newsletter summarizes an analysis of several proposals for upgrading LN channels without closing and reopening them, discusses challenges in ensuring pool miners are paid appropriately, links to a discussion about safely using PSBTs for communicating information related to silent payments, announces a proposed BIP for miniscript, and summarizes a proposal for using frequent rebalancing of an LN channel to simulate a price futures contract. Also included are our regular sections summarizing changes to services and client software, announcing new releases and release candidates, and summarizing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 17, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #303
This week’s newsletter summarizes a new scheme for anonymous usage tokens that could be used for LN channel announcements and multiple other sybil-resistant coordination protocols, links to discussion about a new BIP39 seed phrase splitting scheme, announces an alternative to BitVM for verifying successful execution of arbitrary programs in interactive contract protocols, and relays suggestions for updating the BIPs process.
May 15, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #302
This week’s newsletter announces the beta release of a full node supporting utreexo and summarizes a two proposed extensions to BIP119 OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY. Also included are our regular sections announcing new releases and release candidates and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 8, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #301
This week’s newsletter describes an idea for securing transactions with lamport signatures without requiring any consensus changes. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 1, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #300
This week’s newsletter summarizes a CTV-like proposal that uses commitments embedded in public keys, examines the analysis of a contract protocol with Alloy, announces the arrests of Bitcoin developers, and links to summaries of a CoreDev.tech developer meetup. Also included are our regular sections announcing new releases and release candidates and summarizing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 24, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #299
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to relay weak blocks to improve compact block performance in a network with multiple divergent mempool policies and announces the addition of five BIP editors. Also included are our regular sections with selected questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 17, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #298
This week’s newsletter summarizes an analysis of how a node with cluster mempool behaved when tested with all transactions seen on the network in 2023. Also included are our regular sections describing recent updates to clients and services, announcing new releases and release candidates, and summarizing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 10, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #297
This week’s newsletter announces a new domain-specific language for experimenting with contract protocols, summarizes a discussion about modifying BIP editor responsibilities, and describes proposals to reset and modify testnet. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 3, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #296
This week’s newsletter summarizes discussion about a new push for a consensus cleanup soft fork and announces a plan to choose additional BIP editors by the end of the week. Also included are our regular sections announcing new releases and describing changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Mar 27, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #295
This week’s newsletter announces the disclosure of a bandwidth-wasting attack affecting Bitcoin Core and related nodes, describes several improvements to the idea for transaction fee sponsorship, and summarizes a discussion about using live mempool data to improve Bitcoin Core’s feerate estimation. Also included are our regular sections with selected questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Mar 20, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #294
This week’s newsletter announces a project to create a BIP324 proxy for light clients and summarizes discussion about a proposed BTC Lisp language. Also included are our regular sections describing recent changes to clients and services, announcing new releases and release candidates, and summarizing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Mar 13, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #293
This week’s newsletter summarizes a post about trustless onchain betting for potential soft forks and links to a detailed overview of Chia Lisp for Bitcoiners. Also included are our regular sections summarizing a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcing new releases and release candidates, and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Mar 6, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #292
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about updating the specification for BIP21 bitcoin: URIs, describes a proposal to manage multiple concurrent MuSig2 signing sessions with a minimum of state, links to a thread about adding editors for the BIPs repository, and discusses a set of tools that allow quickly porting the Bitcoin Core GitHub project to a self-hosted GitLab project. Also included are our regular sections announcing new releases and release candidates and summarizing recent changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Feb 28, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #291
This week’s newsletter describes a proposed contract for trustless miner feerate futures, links to a coin selection algorithm for LN nodes providing dual funding liquidity, details a prototype for a vault using OP_CAT, and discusses sending and receiving ecash using LN and ZKCPs. Also included are our regular sections summarizing popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcing new releases and release candidates, and describing recent changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Feb 21, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #290
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal for providing DNS-based human-readable Bitcoin payment instructions, summarizes a post with thoughts about mempool incentive compatibility, links to a thread discussing the design of Cashu and other ecash systems, briefly looks at continuing discussion about 64-bit arithmetic in Bitcoin scripts (including a specification for a previously proposed opcode), and gives an overview of an improved reproducible ASMap creation process. Also included are our regular sections describing updates to clients and services, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Feb 14, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #289
This week’s newsletter summarizes ideas for relay enhancements after cluster mempool is deployed, describes results of research into the topologies and sizes of LN-style anchor outputs in 2023, announces a new host for the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list, and encourages readers to celebrate I Love Free Software Day by thanking free software contributors. Also included are our regular sections summarizing a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Feb 7, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #288
This week’s newsletter announces the public disclosure of a block stalling bug in Bitcoin Core affecting LN, relays a concern about how to securely open new zero-conf channels that are compatible with the proposed version 3 transaction topology restrictions, describes a rule many contract protocols must follow when allowing an external party to contribute an input to a transaction, summarizes multiple discussions about a proposal for new transaction replacement rules to avoid transaction pinning, and provides a brief update on the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list.
Jan 31, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #287
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to allow replacement of v3 transactions using RBF rules to ease the transition to cluster mempool and summarizes an argument against OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY based on it commonly requiring exogenous fees. Also included are our regular sections summarizing top questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcing new releases and release candidates, and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jan 24, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #286
This week’s newsletter announces a fixed consensus failure in older versions of btcd, describes proposed changes to LN for v3 transaction relay and ephemeral anchors, and announces a new repository for Bitcoin-related specifications. Also included are our regular sections describing updates to services and client software, announcing new releases and release candidates, and summarizing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jan 17, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #285
This week’s newsletter 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, and summarizes a discussion about Miner Extractable Value (MEV) in non-zero ephemeral anchors. Also included are our regular sections with the announcements of new releases and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jan 10, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #284
This week’s newsletter summarizes discussion about LN anchors and elements of the v3 transaction relay proposal and announces a research implementation of LN-Symmetry. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting and the description of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jan 3, 2024
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #283
This week’s newsletter 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, and points to new coin selection strategies being proposed for Bitcoin Core. Also included are our regular sections announcing new software releases and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure.
Dec 20, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #282: 2023 Year-in-Review Special
This special edition of the Optech Newsletter summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2023.
Dec 13, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #281
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about griefing liquidity advertisements and includes our regular sections describing changes to services and client software, summarizing popular questions and answers of the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcing new software releases and release candidates, and examining recent changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Dec 6, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #280
This week’s newsletter describes several discussions about the proposed cluster mempool and summarizes the results of a test performed using warnet. Also included are our regular sections summarizing a meeting of the Bitcoin Core PR Review Club, announcing new releases and release candidates, and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 29, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #279
This week’s newsletter summarizes an update to the liquidity advertisements specification. Also included are our regular sections with selected questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 22, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #278
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to allow retrieval of LN offers using specific DNS addresses similar to lightning addresses. Also included are our regular sections summarizing changes to services and client software, announcing new releases and release candidates, and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 15, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #277
This week’s newsletter describes an update to the proposal for ephemeral anchors and provides a contributed field report about miniscript from a developer working at Wizardsardine. Also included are our regular sections announcing new software releases and release candidates and summarizing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Nov 8, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #276
This week’s newsletter announces an upcoming change to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list and briefly summarizes a proposal to allow aggregating multiple HTLCs together. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 1, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #275
This week’s newsletter follows up on several recent discussions about proposed changes to Bitcoin’s scripting language. Also included are our regular sections announcing new releases and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Oct 25, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #274
This week’s newsletter describes the replacement cycling attack against HTLCs used in LN and other systems, examines the mitigations deployed for the attack, and summarizes several proposals for additional mitigations. Also described are a notable bug affecting a Bitcoin Core RPC, research into covenants with minimal changes to Bitcoin Script, and a proposed BIP for an OP_CAT opcode. Also included is our regular monthly section with summaries of popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange.
Oct 18, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #273
This week’s newsletter briefly mentions a recent security disclosure affecting LN users, describes a paper about making payments contingent on the result of running arbitrary programs, and announces a proposed BIP to add fields to PSBTs for MuSig2. Also included are our regular sections that summarize improvements to clients and services, announce new releases and release candidates, and describe notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Oct 11, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #272
This week’s newsletter links to a specification for a proposed OP_TXHASH opcode and includes our regular sections summarizing a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, linking to new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Oct 4, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #271
This week’s newsletter 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, and looks at a proposal for improving LN liquidity by allowing groups of forwarding nodes to pool funds separately from their normal channels. Also included are our regular sections announcing new releases and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 27, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #270
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to use covenants to significantly improve LN’s scalability. Also included are our regular sections summarizing popular questions and answers on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcing new releases and release candidates, and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 20, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #269
This week’s newsletter shares the announcement of an upcoming research event and includes our regular sections summarizing significant updates to various service and client software, announcing new software releases and release candidates, and describing recent changes to popular infrastructure software.
Sep 13, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #268
This week’s newsletter links to draft specifications related to taproot assets and describes a summary of several alternative message protocols for LN that can help enable the use of PTLCs. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new software releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 6, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #267
This week’s newsletter describes a new technique for compressing Bitcoin transactions and summarizes an idea for privacy-enhanced transaction cosigning. Also included are our regular sections announcing new releases and release candidates and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 30, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #266
This week’s newsletter announces the responsible disclosure of a vulnerability affecting old LN implementations and summarizes a suggestion for a mashup of proposed covenant opcodes. Also included are our regular sections with selected questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new software releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 23, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #265
This week’s newsletter describes fraud proofs for outdated backup state and includes our regular sections summarizing recent changes to services and client software, announcing new releases and release candidates, and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 16, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #264
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about adding expiration dates to silent payment addresses and provides an overview of a draft BIP for serverless payjoin. A contributed field report describes the implementation and deployment of a MuSig2-based wallet for scriptless multisignatures. Also included are our regular sections with announcements of new releases and release candidates and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Aug 9, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #263
This week’s newsletter warns about a severe vulnerability in uses of Libbitcoin’s Bitcoin Explorer (bx) tool, summarizes a discussion about the design of denial-of-service protection, announces a plan to begin testing and collecting data about HTLC endorsement, and describes two proposed changes to Bitcoin Core’s transaction relay policy. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 2, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #262
This week’s newsletter links to transcripts of recent LN specification meetings and summarizes a thread about the safety of blind MuSig2 signing. Also included are our regular sections with descriptions of new releases, release candidates, and notable code changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jul 26, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #261
This week’s newsletter describes a protocol for simplifying the communication related to mutual closing of LN channels and summarizes notes from a recent meeting of LN developers. Also included are our regular sections with popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jul 19, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #260
This week’s newsletter includes the final entry in our limited weekly series about mempool policy, plus our regular sections describing notable changes to clients, services, and popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jul 12, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #259
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to remove details from the LN specification that are no longer relevant to modern nodes and includes the penultimate entry in our limited weekly series about mempool policy, plus our regular sections summarizing a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcing new releases and release candidates, and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jul 5, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #258
This week’s newsletter includes another entry in our limited weekly series about mempool policy, plus our regular sections announcing new releases and release candidates and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jun 28, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #257
This week’s newsletter summarizes an idea for preventing the pinning of coinjoin transactions and describes a proposal for speculatively using hoped-for consensus changes. Also included is another entry in our limited weekly series about mempool policy, plus our regular sections describing popular questions and answers on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, new releases and release candidates, and changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jun 21, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #256
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about extending BOLT11 invoices to request two payments. Also included is another entry in our limited weekly series about mempool policy, plus our regular sections describing updates to clients and services, new releases and release candidates, and changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jun 14, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #255
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about allowing relay of transactions containing data in the taproot annex field and links to a draft BIP for silent payments. Also included is another entry in our limited weekly series about mempool policy, plus our regular sections summarizing a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcing new software releases and release candidates, and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jun 7, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #254
This week’s newsletter summarizes mailing list discussion about using the MATT proposal to manage joinpools and replicate functions of the OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY proposal. Also included is another entry in our limited weekly series about mempool policy, plus our regular sections for announcing new software releases and release candidates and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 31, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #253
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal for a new managed joinpool protocol and summarizes an idea for relaying transactions using the Nostr protocol. Also included is another entry in our limited weekly series about mempool policy, plus our regular sections summarizing notable questions and answers posted to the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, listing new software releases and release candidates, and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 24, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #252
This week’s newsletter describes research into zero-knowledge validity proofs for Bitcoin and related protocols. Also included is another entry in our limited weekly series about mempool policy, plus our regular sections describing updates to clients and services, new releases and release candidates, and changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
May 17, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #251
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to begin testing HTLC endorsement, relays a request for feedback about proposed specifications for Lightning Service Providers (LSPs), discusses challenges with opening zero-conf channels when using dual funding, looks at a suggestion for advanced applications of payjoin transactions, and links to summaries of a recent in-person meeting of Bitcoin Core developers. Also included in this week’s newsletter is the first part of a new series about policies for transaction relay and mempool inclusion, plus our regular sections announcing new releases and release candidates (including a security release of libsecp256k1) and describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 10, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #250
This week’s newsletter summarizes a paper about the PoWswap protocol and includes our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software. Also included is a short section celebrating five years of Bitcoin Optech and our 250th newsletter.
May 3, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #249
This week’s newsletter summarizes an analysis of using a flexible covenant design to reimplement the OP_VAULT proposal, summarizes a post about signature adaptor security, and relays a job announcement that may be particularly interesting to some readers. Also included are our regular sections describing new releases, release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 26, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #248
This week’s newsletter relays a request for feedback about a proposal to remove support for the BIP35 mempool P2P protocol message from Bitcoin Core and includes our regular sections with popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 19, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #247
This week’s newsletter provides an update on development of the RGB protocol and includes our regular sections that summarize recent updates to clients and services, announce new releases and release candidates, and describe notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 12, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #246
This week’s newsletter describes a discussion about LN splicing and links to a proposed BIP for recommended transaction terminology. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new releases and release candidates—including a security update for libsecp256k1—and and descriptions of notable changes made to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 5, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #245
This week’s newsletter summarizes an idea for watchtower accountability proofs and includes our regular sections with announcements of new releases and release candidates and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Mar 29, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #244
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to improve capital efficiency on LN using tunable penalties. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of top questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Mar 22, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #243
This week’s newsletter includes our regular sections with descriptions of changes to services and client software, plus summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Mar 15, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #242
This week’s newsletter relays the announcement of a service bit being used for testing Utreexo, links to several new software releases and release candidates, and describes a merged Bitcoin Core pull request.
Mar 8, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #241
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal for an alternative design for OP_VAULT with several benefits and announces a new weekly Optech podcast. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new software releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Mar 1, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #240
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about the fastest way to verify that a BIP32 master seed backup probably hasn’t been corrupted without using any digital devices. Also included are our regular sections with announcements of new releases and release candidates, plus summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Feb 22, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #239
This week’s newsletter links to a draft BIP for the proposed OP_VAULT opcode, summarizes a discussion about allowing LN nodes to set a quality-of-service flag on their channels, relays a request for feedback on LN neighbor-node evaluation criteria, and describes a draft BIP for a seed backup and recovery scheme that can be reliably performed without electronics. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin StackExchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Feb 15, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #238
This week’s newsletter summarizes continued discussion about storing data in the Bitcoin block chain, describes a hypothetical fee dilution attack against some types of multiparty protocols, and describes how a tapscript signature commitment can be used with different parts of the same tree. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of changes to services and client software, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software. We additionally provide one of our rare recommendations for a new search engine focused on Bitcoin technical documentation and discussion.
Feb 8, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #237
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about storing data in transaction witnesses and references a conversation about mitigating LN jamming. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Feb 1, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #236
This week’s newsletter summarizes a proposal for serverless payjoin and describes an idea for allowing proof of payment for LN async payments. Also included is our regular section with descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jan 25, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #235
This week’s newsletter summarizes an analysis comparing proposals for ephemeral anchors to SIGHASH_GROUP and relays a request for researchers to investigate how to create proof that an LN async payment was accepted. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of popular questions and answers on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jan 18, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #234
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal for new vault-specific opcodes and includes our regular sections with summaries of interesting updates to clients and services, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jan 11, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #233
This week’s newsletter describes an idea for allowing offline LN nodes to receive funds onchain that they’ll later be able to use offchain without extra delay. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of new software releases and release candidates, plus descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jan 4, 2023
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #232
This week’s newsletter warns users of Bitcoin Knots about a release signing key compromise, announces the release of two software forks of Bitcoin Core, and summarizes continued discussion about replace-by-fee policies. Also included are our regular sections with the announcements of new software releases and release candidates, plus descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Dec 21, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #231: 2022 Year-in-Review Special
This special edition of the Optech Newsletter summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2022.
Dec 14, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #230
This week’s newsletter summarizes a proposal for a modified version of LN that may improve compatibility with channel factories, describes software for mitigating some effects of channel jamming attacks without changing the LN protocol, and links to a website for tracking unsignaled transaction replacements. Also included are our regular sections with announcements of new client and service software, summaries of popular questions and answers on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Dec 7, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #229
This week’s newsletter describes an implementation of ephemeral anchors and includes our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Nov 30, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #228
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to mitigate LN jamming attacks using reputation credential tokens. Also included are our regular sections with announcements of new software releases and release candidates and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 23, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #227
This week’s newsletter contains our regular sections with selected questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Nov 16, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #226
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to enable generalized smart contracts on Bitcoin and summarizes a paper about addressing LN channel jamming attacks. Also included are our regular sections with descriptions of changes to services and client software, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 9, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #225
This week’s newsletter summarizes continued discussion about a configuration option for enabling full-RBF in Bitcoin Core and describes a bug affecting BTCD, LND, and other software. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, descriptions of new releases and release candidates, and overviews of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 2, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #224
This week’s newsletter describes continued discussion about optionally allowing nodes to enable full RBF, relays a request for feedback on a design element of the BIP324 version 2 encrypted transport protocol, summarizes a proposal for reliably attributing LN failures and delays to particular nodes, and links to a discussion about an alternative to using anchor outputs for modern LN HTLCs. Also included are our regular sections with the announcements of new software releases and release candidates—including a security critical update for LND—and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Oct 26, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #223
This week’s newsletter summarizes continued discussion about enabling full RBF, provides overviews for several transcripts of discussions at a CoreDev.tech meeting, and describes a proposal for ephemeral anchor outputs designed for contract protocols like LN. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, a list of new software releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Oct 19, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #222
This week’s newsletter describes the block parsing bug affecting BTCD and LND last week, summarizes discussion about a planned Bitcoin Core feature change related to replace by fee, outlines research about validity rollups on Bitcoin, shares an announcement about a vulnerability in the draft BIP for MuSig2, examines a proposal to reduce the minimum size of an unconfirmed transaction that Bitcoin Core will relay, and links to an update of the BIP324 proposal for a version 2 encrypted transport protocol for Bitcoin. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of changes to services and client software, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable merges to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Oct 12, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #221
This week’s newsletter summarizes a proposal to allow casual LN users to stay offline for up to several months at a time and describes a document about allowing transaction information servers to host unused wallet addresses. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club, announcements of new software releases and release candidates (including a critical LND fix), and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Oct 5, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #220
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal for new opt-in transaction relay rules and summarizes research into helping LN channels stay balanced. Also included are our regular sections listing new software releases and release candidates plus notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Sep 28, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #219
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to allow LN nodes to advertise capacity-dependent feerates and announces a software fork of Bitcoin Core focused on testing major protocol changes on signet. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 21, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #218
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about using SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT to emulate aspects of drivechains. Also included are our regular sections describing recent changes to services, client software, and popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 14, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #217
This week’s newsletter includes our regular section with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, a list of new software releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Sep 7, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #216
This week’s newsletter summarizes several notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 31, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #215
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal for a standardized wallet label export format and includes our regular sections with summaries of recent questions and answers from the Bitcoin StackExchange, a list of new software releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 24, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #214
This week’s newsletter links to the overview of a guide about channel jamming attacks and summarizes several updates to a PR for silent payments. Also included are our regular sections with descriptions of changes to popular services and clients, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 17, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #213
This week’s newsletter describes how BLS signatures could be used to improve DLCs without consensus changes to Bitcoin and includes our regular sections with announcements of new software releases and release candidates, plus summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 10, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #212
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about lowering the default minimum transaction relay feerate in Bitcoin Core and other nodes. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Aug 3, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #211
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to allow multiple derivation paths in a single output script descriptor and includes our regular section with summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jul 27, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #210
This week’s newsletter describes a proposed BIP for creating signed messages for non-legacy addresses and summarizes a discussion about provably burning small amounts of bitcoin for denial of service protection. Also included are our regular sections with popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and releases candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jul 20, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #209
This week’s newsletter summarizes several related discussions about providing a sustainable long term block reward for Bitcoin. Also included are our regular sections with descriptions of new features for clients and services, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jul 13, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #208
This week’s newsletter summarizes discussions about half aggregation of schnorr signatures, a workaround for protocols that can’t reliably use x-only pubkeys, and allowing deliberately slow LN payment forwarding. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club, announcements of releases and relase candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jul 6, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #207
This week’s newsletter summarizes discussions about long-term block reward funding, alternatives to BIP47 reusable payment codes, options for announcing LN channel splices, LN routing fee collection strategies, and onion message rate limiting. Also included are our regular sections with announcements of new software releases and release candidates, plus summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jun 29, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #206
This week’s newsletter includes our regular sections summarizing popular questions and answers from Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcing new software releases and release candidates, and describing recent changes to Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jun 22, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #205
This week’s newsletter describes a proposed option for Bitcoin Core that would make it easier to enable transaction replacement even for transactions that don’t opt-in to BIP125, links to information about the Hertzbleed sidechannel vulnerability, summarizes the conclusion of a discussion about time stamping system design, and examines a new anti-sybil protocol that uses Bitcoin UTXOs. Also included are our regular sections with descriptions of interesting new features in Bitcoin clients and services, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jun 15, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #204
This week’s newsletter summarizes continued discussion about adding package relay to the Bitcoin P2P network, shares a summary of the recent LN developers meeting, and describes an argument for how spenders and routing nodes on LN can optimize for both reliability and low fees in a way that benefits both groups. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of recent releases and release candidates plus notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jun 8, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #203
This week’s newsletter includes our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, a list of new software releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jun 1, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #202
This week’s newsletter describes experimentation by developers working on silent payments and includes our regular sections with summaries of new releases and release candidates plus notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 25, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #201
This week’s newsletter summarizes a draft BIP for package relay and provides an overview of a concern with Miner Extractable Value (MEV) for Bitcoin covenant design. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of top questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 18, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #200
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about the minimum change to Bitcoin’s Script language necessary to enable recursive covenants, examines a revised proposal to add an OP_TX opcode, and reviews research into adapting output script descriptors for hardware signing devices. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of recent changes to Bitcoin services and clients, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software. Additionally, we celebrate the publication of Optech’s 200^th regular newsletter.
May 11, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #199
This week’s short newsletter summarizes a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting and describes an update to Rust Bitcoin.
May 4, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #198
This week’s newsletter summarizes a post about implementing MuSig2, relays the responsible disclosure of a security issue affecting some older LN implementations, discusses a proposal for measuring support for consensus changes through transaction signaling, and examines the effect of rate limiting on more bandwidth efficient LN gossiping. Also included are our regular sections summarizing new software releases and release candidates plus notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Apr 27, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #197
This week’s newsletter summarizes discussion about activating OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY and includes our regular sections highlighting top questions and answers on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, new software releases and release candidates, and recent changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 20, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #196
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about allowing quantum-safe key exchange on Bitcoin and includes our regular sections with descriptions of notable changes to services and client software, releases and release candidates, and popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 13, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #195
This week’s newsletter describes a protocol for transferring non-bitcoin tokens in Bitcoin transactions and LN payments and links to a proposed BIP for the MuSig2 multisignature protocol. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new software releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 6, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #194
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal for delinked reusable addresses, summarizes how the WabiSabi protocol may be used as an enhanced alternative to payjoin, examines a discussion about adding communication standards to the DLC specification, and looks at renewed discussion about updating LN commitment formats. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of new software releases and release candidates plus descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Mar 30, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #193
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal for Bitcoin Core to allow replacing transaction witnesses in its mempool and summarizes continued discussion about updating the LN gossip protocol. Also included are our regular sections with selected questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Mar 23, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #192
This week’s newsletter summarizes discussion about the speedy trial soft fork activation mechanism and links to an update of an optimized LN pathfinding algorithm. Also included are our regular sections with descriptions of recent changes to services and client software, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Mar 16, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #191
This week’s newsletter describes proposals to extend or replace Bitcoin Script with new opcodes, summarizes recent discussions about improving RBF policy, and links to continued work on the OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY opcode. Also included is our regular section describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Mar 9, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #190
This week’s newsletter describes multiple facets of a discussion about how much future soft forks should increase the expressiveness of Bitcoin’s Script and Tapscript languages and summarizes a proposal to charge for bandwidth used relaying onion messages. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new software releases and RCs, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Mar 2, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #189
This week’s newsletter describes a new proposed OP_EVICT opcode and includes our regular sections with summaries of new releases and release candidates and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Feb 23, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #188
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about fee bumping and transaction fee sponsorship, describes a proposal for an updated LN gossip wire protocol, and advertises a signet for testing OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY. Also included are our regular sections with selected questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Feb 16, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #187
This week’s newsletter describes continued discussion about covenants in Bitcoin and includes our regular sections with summaries of changes to services and client software and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Feb 9, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #186
This week’s newsletter describes a discussion about changing relay policy for replace-by-fee transactions and includes our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Feb 2, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #185
This week’s newsletter describes an analysis of the proposed OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV) opcode’s effect on discreet log contracts and summarizes a discussion about alternative changes to tapscript to enable CTV and SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT. Also included are our regular sections with announcements of new releases and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jan 26, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #184
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to extend PSBTs with fields for spending outputs constructed using a pay-to-contract protocol and includes our regular sections with summaries of top posts from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jan 19, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #183
This week’s newsletter shares the announcement of a new legal defense fund for Bitcoin developers and summarizes some recent discussion about the proposed OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY soft fork. Also included are our regular sections with descriptions of some recent changes to services and client software, plus summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jan 12, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #182
This week’s newsletter describes an idea to add accounts to Bitcoin for paying transaction fees and includes our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jan 5, 2022
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #181
This week’s newsletter describes an alternative proposal to slowly phase in full replace-by-fee and announces a series of meetings to review the proposed OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY soft fork. Also included are our regular sections with announcements of releases and release candidates and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Dec 22, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #180: 2021 Year-in-Review Special
This special edition of the Optech Newsletter summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2021.
Dec 15, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #179
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to allow relay of transactions with zero-value outputs in some cases and summarizes a discussion about preparing LN for the adoption of PTLCs. Also included are our regular sections with a list of recent changes to services and client software, popular questions on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Dec 8, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #178
This week’s newsletter describes a post about fee-bumping research and contains our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, the latest releases and release candidates for Bitcoin software, and notable changes to popular infrastructure projects.
Dec 1, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #177
This week’s newsletter describes a recently fixed interoperability issue between different LN software and includes our regular sections with a list of new releases and release candidates plus notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 24, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #176
This week’s newsletter links to a discussion about how to allow LN users to choose between higher fees and higher payment reliability. Also included are our regular sections with popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of new releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 17, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #175
This week’s newsletter provides information about the activation of taproot and includes our regular sections with summaries of changes to services and client software, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 10, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #174
This week’s newsletter summarizes a post about ways of integrating discreet log contracts with LN channels, links to a detailed summary of the recent LN developer conference, and describes ideas for performing additional verification of compact block filters. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, our final column about preparing for taproot activation, descriptions of new releases and release candidates, and a list of notable changes to popular infrastructure software.
Nov 3, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #173
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about submitting transactions directly to miners, links to a set of recommended taproot test vectors for wallet implementations, and includes our regular sections about preparing for taproot, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Oct 27, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #172
This week’s newsletter includes our regular sections with summaries of popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, information about preparing for taproot activation, a list of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Oct 20, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #171
This week’s newsletter summarizes a thread about paying frequently-offline LN nodes, describes a set of proposals for lowering the cost of LN payment path probing in order to make certain attacks more expensive, and links to instructions useful for creating taproot transactions on signet and testnet. Also included are our regular sections describing recent changes to clients and services, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Oct 13, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #170
This week’s newsletter describes a vulnerability recently fixed in several LN implementations and summarizes a proposal providing multiple benefits for upgrading the LN protocol to take advantage of features in taproot. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a recent Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, information about preparing for taproot, listings of new software releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Oct 6, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #169
This week’s newsletter summarizes a proposal to add transaction heritage identifiers to Bitcoin and includes our regular sections with information about preparing for taproot, a list of new releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 29, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #168
This week’s newsletter summarizes a proposal to implement breaking changes in the DLC specification, examines options for allowing recovery of closed LN channels using just a BIP32 seed, and describes an idea to generate stateless LN invoices. Also included are our regular sections with popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, ideas for preparing for taproot’s activation, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 22, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #167
This week’s newsletter describes a proposed modification to the BIP process, summarizes a plan to add support for package relay to Bitcoin Core, and links to a discussion about adding LN node information to DNS. Also included are our regular sections with descriptions of changes to services and client software, how you can prepare for taproot, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 15, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #166
This week’s newsletter describes a new proposal for a covenant opcode and summarizes a request for feedback on implementing regular reorgs on signet. Also included are our regular sections with ideas for preparing for taproot activation, a list of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 8, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #165
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal for Bitcoin-related MIME types and summarizes a paper about a design for a new decentralized mining pool. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, how to prepare for taproot, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Sep 1, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #164
This week’s newsletter describes a new web-based tool for decoding and modifying PSBTs and links to a blog post and proof-of-concept implementation of an eltoo-based LN payment channel. Also included are our regular sections with information about preparing for taproot, announcements of new software release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Aug 25, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #163
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about setting LN channel base fees to zero and includes our regular sections with popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, how you can prepare for taproot, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Aug 18, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #162
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about the dust limit and includes our regular sections with descriptions of changes to services and client software, how you can prepare for taproot, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 11, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #161
This week’s newsletter follows up on a previous description about fidelity bonds in JoinMarket and includes our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, suggestions for preparing for taproot, announcements of releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular infrastructure projects.
Aug 4, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #160
This week’s newsletter includes our regular sections describing how you can prepare for taproot, summarizing the latest releases and release candidates, and listing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jul 28, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #159
This week’s newsletter includes our regular sections with the best questions and answers of the past month from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, our latest column about preparing for taproot, a list of new software releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jul 21, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #158
This week’s newsletter describes recent changes to services and client software, discusses why wallets should wait before generating taproot addresses, lists new software releases and release candidates, and summarizes notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jul 14, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #157
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about a proposed new opcode and links to an updated wiki page for tracking bech32m support. Also included are our regular sections with highlights from a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, suggestions about preparing for taproot, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jul 7, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #156
This week’s newsletter describes a set of BIPs for output script descriptors, summarizes a proposal to create a set of standards documents for LN protocol extensions and application interoperability, and discusses standardizing support for pre-trusted zero-conf channel opens. Also included are our regular sections describing how to prepare for taproot, releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jun 30, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #155
This week’s newsletter summarizes two proposed BIPs related to wallet support for taproot and includes our regular sections describing selected questions and answers on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, how to prepare for taproot, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jun 23, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #154
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to allow universal transaction replacement by fee and includes the first post in a new weekly series about preparing for taproot. Also included are our regular sections describing updates to clients and services, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jun 16, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #153
This week’s newsletter celebrates the lock-in of the taproot soft fork, describes a draft BIP for improving transaction privacy by varying the fields used to implement anti fee sniping, and features an article about the challenges of combining transaction replacement with payment batching. Also included are our regular sections with announcements of new software releases and release candidates, plus notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jun 9, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #152
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to allow LN nodes to receive payments without keeping their private keys online all the time. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new software releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jun 2, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #151
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to change Bitcoin Core’s transaction selection algorithm for miner block templates to slightly increase miner profitability and give fee bumping users more collective leverage. Also included are our regular sections describing software releases and release candidates, plus notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 26, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #150
This week’s newsletter announces a change of networks for several IRC channels and celebrates Optech’s 150th newsletter. Also included are our regular sections with popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, new software releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
May 19, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #149
This week’s newsletter provides updates on the previously proposed transaction relay reliability workshop and CVE-2021-31876. Also included are our regular sections describing updates to services and client software, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 12, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #148
This week’s newsletter describes a security disclosure affecting protocols depending on a certain BIP125 opt-in replace by fee behavior and includes our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new software releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 5, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #147
This week’s newsletter encourages miners to start signaling for taproot and describes continued discussion about closing lost LN channels using only a wallet seed. Also included are our regular sections with announcements of releases and release candidates, plus notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 28, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #146
This week’s newsletter describes a draft specification for LN splicing, announces a workshop about transaction relay security, announces the addition of ECDSA signature adaptor support to libsecp256k1-zkp, and links to proposals to change the BIPs process. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of software releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 21, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #145
This week’s newsletter describes progress on activating taproot, summarizes an update to LN offers to partly address stuck payments, relays a request for feedback on anchor outputs in LND, and announces the public launch of the Sapio smart contract development toolkit. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of changes to popular clients and services, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 14, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #144
This week’s newsletter summarizes recent progress on code to activate taproot and contains our regular sections with descriptions of a recent Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 7, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #143
This week’s newsletter contains our regular sections with announcements of new releases and release candidates, plus notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Mar 31, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #142
This week’s newsletter describes a paper and a short discussion about probabilistic path selection for LN and includes our regular sections with summaries of popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, release and release candidates, and notable changes to Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Mar 24, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #141
This week’s newsletter describes a technique for signature delegation under Bitcoin’s existing consensus rules, summarizes a discussion about taproot’s effect on Bitcoin’s resistance to quantum cryptography, and announces a series of weekly meetings to help activate taproot. Also included are our regular sections describing notable changes to services and client software, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Mar 17, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #140
This week’s newsletter describes a discussion about rescuing lost LN funding transactions and includes our regular sections with announcements of releases, release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Mar 10, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #139
This week’s newsletter summarizes continued discussion about proposed methods for activating taproot and links to an effort to document existing software building on top of taproot. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Mar 3, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #138
This week’s newsletter describes discussion about a desired replacement for some of the features of the BIP70 payment protocol and summarizes proposals for a standardized way to exchange fraud proofs for Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs). Also included are our regular sections describing new software releases, available release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Feb 24, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #137
This week’s newsletter describes the results of discussion about choosing activation parameters for a taproot soft fork and includes our regular sections with selected questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Feb 17, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #136
This week’s newsletter describes the development of a new constant-time algorithm for generating and verifying transaction signatures, mentions a proposal to stop processing unsolicited transactions, summarizes a proposed BIP for setting up multisig wallets, shares insight from a discussion about managing escrows over LN, links to renewed discussion about bidirectional upfront LN fees, and mentions a new protocol for mitigating the risk of malicious hardware wallets. Also included are our regular sections with news about updated clients and services, announcements of new software releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Feb 10, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #135
This week’s newsletter links to the summary of last week’s taproot activation meeting and announces another scheduled meeting for next week, plus it describes recent progress in discreet log contracts and a new mailing list for discussing them. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, descriptions of releases and release candidates, and a list of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Feb 3, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #134
This week’s newsletter links to a blog post about how a small change to the Script language after taproot activation could enable increased contract flexibility and includes our regular sections with notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jan 27, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #133
This week’s newsletter announces a meeting to discuss taproot activation mechanisms, includes a link to a Bitcoin Core usage survey, and includes our regular sections with top questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, a list of releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jan 20, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #132
This week’s newsletter summarizes posts to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list about payjoin adoption and making hardware wallets compatible with more advanced Bitcoin features. Also included are our regular sections with overviews of changes to services and client software, new releases and release candidates, and changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jan 13, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #131
This week’s newsletter describes a new proposed Bitcoin P2P protocol message, a BIP for the bech32 modified address format, and an idea for preventing UTXO probing in proposed dual-funded LN channels. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, a list of releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jan 6, 2021
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #130
This week’s newsletter describes a proposed update to BIP322 generic message signing and links to a specification for LN trampoline routing. Also included are our regular sections with announcements of releases, release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Dec 23, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #129: 2020 Year-in-Review Special
This special edition of the Optech Newsletter summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2020.
Dec 16, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #128
This week’s newsletter describes two suggested improvements to LN static backups and links to a proposal for a new version of PSBTs. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of changes to services and client software, popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Dec 9, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #127
This week’s newsletter describes a proposed change to the bech32 address format for taproot, mentions a bug handling certain QR-encoded addresses, thanks new members of the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance, and mentions new features of the Minsc policy language and compiler. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of a recent Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, new software releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Dec 2, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #126
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal for using fidelity bonds on LN to prevent denial of service attacks, summarizes a PR to address a fee siphoning attack that could affect LN channels using anchor outputs, and links to a proposed specification for miniscript. Also included are our regular sections with releases, release candidates, and recent code changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 25, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #125
This week’s newsletter links to a website that tracks miner support for taproot activation, announces a new organization funding Bitcoin research and development, and includes our regular sections with popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 18, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #124
This week’s newsletter contains a warning about backdoored VM images. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of notable improvements to clients and services, announcements of releases and release candidates, and changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 11, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #123
This week’s newsletter shares the announcement of a marketplace for incoming LN channels. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Nov 4, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #122
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about bi-directional upfront fees for LN and relays the results of a small survey among experts about their preferences for taproot activation. Also included are our regular sections with updates about various projects.
Oct 28, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #121
This week’s newsletter describes the disclosure of two vulnerabilities in LND and includes our regular sections with summaries of popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of releases and release candidates, and descriptions of changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Oct 21, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #120
This week’s newsletter provides an overview of the new MuSig2 paper, summarizes additional discussion about upfront fees in LN, and describes a proposal to simplify management of LN payments. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of notable improvements to clients and services, announcements of releases and release candidates, and changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Oct 14, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #119
This week’s newsletter relays a security warning for LND users, summarizes discussion about LN upfront payments, describes a mailing list thread about updating bech32 addresses for taproot, and links to an updated proposal for an alternative way to secure LN payments. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Oct 7, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #118
This week’s newsletter describes a revised proposal for a generic message signing protocol. Also included are our regular sections describing releases, release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 30, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #117
This week’s newsletter describes a compiler bug that casts doubt on the safety of secure systems and explains a technique that can be used to more efficiently verify ECDSA signatures in Bitcoin. Also included are our regular sections with popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of releases and release candidates, and summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 23, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #116
This week’s newsletter describes a proposed soft fork to enable a new type of fee bumping and summarizes research into scripts that can never be spent because they require satisfying both timelocks and heightlocks. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of updates to services and client software, a list of new releases and release candidates, and changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Sep 16, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #115
This week’s newsletter recommends checking for nodes vulnerable to the InvDoS attack, briefly describes that attack, summarizes another attack against LN channels, and links to the announcement of the Crypto Open Patent Alliance. Also included are our regular sections with releases, release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Sep 9, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #114
This week’s newsletter describes continued discussion about a protocol for making routable coinswaps and includes our regular sections summarizing a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Sep 2, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #113
This week’s newsletter describes a proposed change to the way LN commitment transactions are constructed, summarizes discussion of a default signet, and links to a proposal for standardizing temporarily trusted LN channels. Also included are our regular sections with recently transcribed talks and conversations, releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Aug 26, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #112
This week’s newsletter links to a discussion about routed coinswaps and includes our regular sections with summaries of questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 19, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #111
This week’s newsletter describes a possible update to the BIP340 specification of schnorr signatures and a new proposed BIP that specifies how Bitcoin nodes should handle P2P protocol feature negotiation in a forward compatible way. Also included are our regular sections with notable changes to services and client software, releases and release candidates, and changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Aug 12, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #110
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT and eltoo, includes a field report showing how 57,000 BTC could have been saved in transaction fees using segwit and batching, and provides our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Aug 5, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #109
This week’s newsletter describes the new Minsc policy language and contains our regular sections with recently transcribed talks and conversations, releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jul 29, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #108
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to allow upgrading LN channel commitment transaction formats without opening new channels and includes a field report from River Financial about building wallet software using PSBTs and descriptors. Also included are our regular sections with selected questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, recent releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jul 22, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #107
This week’s newsletter links to several discussions about activating taproot and summarizes a proposed update to BIP173 bech32 addresses. Also included are our regular sections summarizing interesting changes to services and client software, releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jul 15, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #106
This week’s newsletter describes a proposed update to the draft BIP118 SIGHASH_NOINPUT and summarizes notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jul 8, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #105
This week’s newsletter summarizes a proposed BIP for BIP32-based path templates and includes our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jul 1, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #104
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about mining incentives related to HTLCs and links to an announcement about a proposed service to store and relay presigned transactions. Also included are our regular sections with recently transcribed talks and conversations, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jun 24, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #103
This week’s newsletter summarizes a newly published fee ransom attack against LN users, links to continued discussion about the attack against LN atomicity, and shares a reminder about collision attacks on RIPEMD160-based addresses in multiparty protocols. Also included are our regular sections with popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, a list of releases and release candidates published this week, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jun 17, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #102
This week’s newsletter summarizes the CoinPool payment pool proposal and the WabiSabi coordinated coinjoin protocol. Also included are our regular sections with notable changes to services, client software, and infrastructure software.
Jun 10, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #101
This week’s newsletter links to a blog post and paper about using eclipse attacks against Bitcoin software in order to steal from LN channels and describes the history and impact of a fee overpayment attack that affects hardware wallets. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, descriptions of recent software releases, and summaries of recent changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jun 3, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #100
This week’s newsletter summarizes a proposed design for a coinswap implementation, describes new middleware for allowing lightweight wallets to request information directly from a user’s own node, and highlights two transaction size calculators. Also included are our regular sections with descriptions of several recently transcribed talks, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software. A special final section celebrates the publication of Newsletter #100.
May 27, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #99
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about the minimum allowed transaction size and includes our regular sections with popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, releases and release candidates, and notable merges from Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
May 20, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #98
This week’s newsletter relays a request for comments on a proposed change to the BIP341 taproot transaction digest and briefly summarizes discussion about a new and more concise protocol for atomic swaps. Also included are our regular sections describing changes to services and client software, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 13, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #97
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal that taproot signatures make an additional commitment to spent scriptPubKeys and includes our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, a list of releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
May 6, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #96
This week’s newsletter links to a discussion about using enhanced QR codes for communicating large transactions, includes a field report from Suredbits about building a high-availability LN node, and briefly summarizes several recently transcribed talks and conversations. Also included are our regular sections with releases, release candidates, and notable code changes from popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 29, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #95
This week’s newsletter summarizes the disclosure of an issue affecting the safety of routed LN payments and announces a new presigned vault proposal. Also included are our regular sections with popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, announcements of releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable code changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Apr 22, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #94
This week’s newsletter links to a prototype for creating vaults using pre-signed transactions and includes our regular sections about notable changes to services, client software, and popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Apr 15, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #93
This week’s newsletter summarizes a proposal for creating a unified multi-wallet backup that circumvents the inability to import BIP32 extended private keys into many wallets that support deterministic key derivation. Also included are our regular sections describing release candidates and changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Apr 8, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #92
This week’s newsletter describes work on simplified ECDSA adaptor signatures and includes our regular sections for Bitcoin Core PR Review Club discussion summaries, release announcements, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Apr 1, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #91
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to make statechains deployable on Bitcoin without consensus changes, summarizes a discussion about a schnorr nonce generation function that helps protect against differential power analysis, and links to a proposed update to BIP322 generic signmessage. Also included is our regular section about notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Mar 25, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #90
This week’s newsletter summarizes several questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange and describes notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Mar 18, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #89
This week’s newsletter summarizes an update to a proposed standard for LN and includes our regular sections about notable changes to services, client software, and popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Mar 11, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #88
This week’s newsletter links to a description of methods for preventing hardware wallets from leaking private information through transaction signatures, provides an update on the BIP322 generic signmessage protocol, and summarizes a recent meeting of the Bitcoin Core PR Review Club. Also included are our regular sections about new releases and notable merges of popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Mar 4, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #87
This week’s newsletter describes a proposed update to BIP340 schnorr keys and signatures, seeks feedback on a proposal to improve startup feature negotiation between full nodes, examines a suggestion for a standardized way to prevent hardware wallets from using corrupt nonces to leak private keys, and links to an analysis of the properties necessary in a hash function for taproot to be secure. Also included are our regular sections for release announcements and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Feb 26, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #86
This week’s newsletter announces the 2020 Chaincode Residency program, describes two proposed routing improvements for LN, summarizes three interesting talks from the Stanford Blockchain Conference, links to popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, and lists several notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Feb 19, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #85
This week’s newsletter announces the release of C-Lightning 0.8.1, requests help testing a Bitcoin Core maintenance release, summarizes a discussion about taproot versus implementing MAST and schnorr signatures separately, describes new ideas for using PoDLEs in LN channel construction, and highlights a new implication of work on privacy-enhanced payments to unannounced LN channels. Also included are our regular sections about notable changes to popular services, client software, and infrastructure projects.
Feb 12, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #84
This week’s newsletter seeks help testing a Bitcoin Core release candidate and summarizes some discussion about the BIP119 OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY proposal. Also included is our regular section about notable code and documentation changes.
Feb 5, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #83
This week’s newsletter announces the release of Eclair 0.3.3, requests help testing a Bitcoin Core maintenance release, links to a new tool for experimenting with taproot and tapscript, summarizes discussion about safely generating schnorr signatures with precomputed public keys, and describes a proposal for interactive construction of LN funding transactions. Also included is our regular section about notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jan 29, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #82
This week’s newsletter announces the release of LND 0.9.0-beta, asks for help testing a release candidate for a Bitcoin Core maintenance release, describes a proposal to break the linkability between UTXOs and unannounced LN channels, and summarizes a modification to the proposed SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUTANYSCRIPT signature hash that may simplify management of payments in eltoo-based payment channels. Also included are our regular sections for popular Bitcoin Stack Exchange Q&A and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure and documentation projects.
Jan 22, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #81
This week’s newsletter requests help testing a pre-release of the next major version of LND, seeks review of a method for sending payments as part of a chaumian coinjoin mix, links to a work-in-progress protocol specification for discreet log contracts, and includes our regular sections about notable changes to popular services, client software, and infrastructure projects.
Jan 15, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #80
This week’s newsletter requests help testing the next version of LND, summarizes a discussion about soft fork activation mechanisms, and describes a few notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
Jan 8, 2020
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #79
This week’s newsletter summarizes the final week of the organized taproot review, describes a discussion about coinjoin mixing without either equal value inputs or outputs, and mentions a proposal to encode output script descriptors in end-user interfaces. Also included is our regular section about notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Dec 28, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #78: 2019 Year-in-Review Special
This special edition of the Optech Newsletter summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2019.
Dec 18, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #77
This week’s newsletter announces the release of LND 0.8.2-beta, requests help testing the latest C-Lightning release candidate, discusses widespread support for basic multipath payments in LN, provides an update on bech32 error detection reliability, summarizes updates to the proposed OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY opcode, and links to a discussion about the impact of eclipse attacks on LN channels. Also included are our regular sections about notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects, changes to services and client software, and popular Bitcoin Stack Exchange questions and answers.
Dec 11, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #76
This week’s newsletter announces a new maintenance release of LND, summarizes a discussion about watchtowers for eltoo payment channels, and describes several notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Dec 4, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #75
This week’s newsletter describes some recent discussion about the schnorr and taproot proposals, notes the recent update of the proposal formerly known as OP_CHECKOUTPUTSHASHVERIFY and OP_SECURETHEBAG, links to a proposal to standardize LN watchtowers, and summarizes notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Nov 27, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #74
This week’s newsletter announces a new major version of Bitcoin Core, provides some updates on Bitcoin and LN developer mailing lists, and describes recent developments in the ongoing schnorr/taproot review. Also included are our regular sections with top-voted questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Nov 20, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #73
This week’s newsletter announces a new minor version release of LND, notes downtime on the development mailing lists, describes some recent updates to Bitcoin services and clients, and summarizes recent changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Nov 13, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #72
This week’s newsletter announces a security disclosure affecting some older releases of Bitcoin Core, describes new developments related to taproot, mentions a potential privacy leak related to the LN payment data format, and describes two proposed changes to the LN specification that are under discussion. Also included is our regular section describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Nov 6, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #71
This week’s newsletter requests help testing a Bitcoin Core release candidate, summarizes continued discussion of LN anchor outputs, and describes a proposal for allowing full nodes and lightweight clients to signal support for IP address relay. Also included is our regular section about notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Oct 30, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #70
This week’s newsletter announces the latest C-Lightning release, requests help testing a Bitcoin Core release candidate, describes discussions about simplified LN commitments using CPFP carve-out, and summarizes several top-voted questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange.
Oct 23, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #69
This week’s newsletter requests testing of the C-Lightning and Bitcoin Core release candidates, invites participation in structured review of the taproot proposal, highlights updates to two Bitcoin wallets, and describes a few notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Oct 16, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #68
This week’s newsletter announces the newest release of LND, requests testing of release candidates for Bitcoin Core and C-Lightning, relays an update on the taproot proposal, describes a proposed increase in the default LN routing fees, and summarizes three talks from the recent Cryptoeconomic Systems Summit. Also included is our regular section on notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Oct 9, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #67
This week’s newsletter requests help testing release candidates for Bitcoin Core and LND, tracks continued discussion about the proposed noinput and anyprevout sighash flags, and describes several notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Oct 2, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #66
This week’s newsletter notes a proposed BIP that would allow nodes to implement the Erlay transaction relay protocol, announces full disclosure of vulnerabilities that affected earlier versions of LN implementations, links to a transcript from a recent Optech schnorr and taproot workshop, and includes a field report about some of the technology Bitcoin exchange BTSE uses to conserve block chain space while ensuring the safety of user deposits. We also describe several notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Sep 25, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #65
This week’s newsletter requests feedback on not allowing P2SH-wrapped addresses for taproot, describes proposed changes to script resource limits in tapscript, and mentions a discussion about watchtower storage costs. Also included are a selection of popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange and a short list of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Sep 18, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #64
This week’s newsletter summarizes several talks from the Bitcoin Edge Dev++ training sessions and Scaling Bitcoin conference held last week in Tel Aviv. Also included is our regular section on notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Sep 11, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #63
This week’s newsletter describes a demo implementation of eltoo and several discussions related to it, requests comments on limiting the normal number of LN gossip updates to one per day, and provides our longest-to-date list of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Sep 4, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #62
This week’s newsletter relays a security announcement for LN implementations, describes a non-interactive coinjoin proposal, and notes a few changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Aug 28, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #61
This week’s newsletter asks for comments on the miniscript language, publishes our final bech32 sending support section, includes popular Q&A from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, and describes several notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Aug 21, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #60
This week’s newsletter notes a change to Bitcoin Core’s consensus logic and announces a new feature on the Optech website for tracking technology adoption between different wallets and services. Also included are our regular sections about bech32 sending support and notable changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Aug 14, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #59
This week’s newsletter briefly describes two discussions on the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list, one about Bitcoin vaults and one about reducing the size of public keys used in taproot. Also included are our regular sections about bech32 sending support and notable changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Aug 7, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #58
This week’s newsletter announces the maintenance release of Bitcoin Core 0.18.1, summarizes a discussion about BIP174 extensions, and notes a proposal for LN trampoline payments. Our bech32 sending support section this week features a special case study contributed by BRD and our notable changes section highlights several possibly significant developments.
Jul 31, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #57
This week’s newsletter describes fidelity bonds for JoinMarket-style decentralized coinjoin, mentions a PR for BIP322 signmessage support (including the ability to sign for bech32 addresses), and summarizes a discussion about bloom filters. Also included are our regular sections about bech32 sending support, popular Q&A from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jul 24, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #56
This week’s newsletter describes progress on signet and an idea for just-in-time routing on LN. Also included are our regular sections about bech32 sending support and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jul 17, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #55
This week’s newsletter summarizes a proposal for an update to the LN gossip protocol. Also included are our regular sections on bech32 sending support and notable changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jul 10, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #54
This week’s newsletter announces the release of the newest version of Eclair and describes a potential routing improvement for LN. Also included are our regular sections about bech32 sending support and notable code changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jul 3, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #53
This week’s newsletter announces the newest release of C-Lightning, briefly describes several proposals related to LN, and provides our usual sections about bech32 sending support and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jun 26, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #52
This week’s newsletter announces a pending disclosure of minor vulnerabilities for older Bitcoin Core releases, suggests continued testing of RCs for LN software, and describes a proposed technique to make Bitcoin Core nodes a bit more resistant to eclipse attacks. Also included are our regular sections on bech32 sending support, popular Stack Exchange topics, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jun 19, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #51
This week’s newsletter requests testing on RCs for both LND and C-Lightning, describes using ECDH for uncoordinated LN payments, summarizes a proposal to add information about delays to LN routing replies, and includes summaries of some interesting talks from the recent ‘Breaking Bitcoin’ conference in Amsterdam. Also included are our regular sections on bech32 sending support and notable changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jun 12, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #50
This week’s newsletter summarizes meetings from the CoreDev.tech event, describes a proposed amendment to BIP125 replace-by-fee, links to an Optech executive briefing video about Schnorr/Taproot, and briefly celebrates the 50th weekly issue of the Optech Newsletter. Also included are our regular sections on bech32 sending support and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jun 5, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #49
This week’s newsletter describes the proposed Erlay protocol that could significantly reduce the overhead of relaying unconfirmed transactions between nodes, summarizes an executive briefing by Bitrefill CEO Sergej Kotliar about LN, and lists some recent changes to the COSHV proposal described last week. Also included are our regular sections on bech32 sending support and notable code changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
May 29, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #48
This week’s newsletter describes the new proposed OP_CHECKOUTPUTSHASHVERIFY opcode, covers continued discussion of Taproot, and links to a video presentation about handling increasing Bitcoin transaction fees. Also included are our regular sections on bech32 sending support, top-voted Bitcoin Stack Exchange questions and answers, and notable changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
May 21, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #47
This week’s newsletter describes the bip-anyprevout soft fork proposal, summarizes a few technical talks from the Magical Crypto Friends conference, and includes our regular sections on bech32 sending support and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
May 14, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #46
This week’s newsletter includes a special section about the recent Taproot proposal, news about a small potential change to the BIP174 PSBT format, and our regular sections about bech32 sending support and notable changes in popular infrastructure projects.
May 7, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #45
This week’s newsletter highlights some of the changes in the recently-released Bitcoin Core 0.18.0, briefly mentions two proposed BIPs, describes how bech32 addresses are forward compatible with expected protocol improvements, and summarizes notable changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Apr 30, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #44
This week’s newsletter sees another slow news week but does contain our regular sections on bech32 sending support, selected questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, and notable changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Apr 23, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #43
This week’s newsletter announces the release of LND 0.6-beta and the merge of BIP158 support into Bitcoin Core’s development branch. Also included are the regular sections about bech32 sending support and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Apr 16, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #42
This week’s newsletter requests testing of the latest release candidates for Bitcoin Core and LND, describes how helping people accept payments to bech32 addresses can lower fees, and lists notable code changes in popular Bitcoin projects.
Apr 9, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #41
This week’s newsletter requests testing for release candidates of Bitcoin Core and LND, describes a discussion about UTXO snapshots for fast initial syncing of nodes, and provides regular coverage of bech32 sending support and notable merges in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Apr 2, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #40
This week’s newsletter notes a spike in estimated transaction fees, describes LN trampoline payments, and publicizes Bitcoin Core’s intent to default its built-in wallet to bech32 receiving addresses in version 0.20 or earlier. Also included are regular sections about bech32 sending support and notable code changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Mar 26, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #39
This week’s newsletter links to a proposal to encrypt P2P communication and describes Lightning Loop, a tool and service for withdrawing bitcoins from an LN channel to an onchain transaction. Also included are links to resources about bech32 adoption, summaries of popular questions and answers from Bitcoin Stack Exchange, and a list of notable code changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Mar 19, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #38
This week’s newsletter gives an update on the planned removal of BIP61 reject messages from Bitcoin Core, links to further discussion about SIGHASH_NOINPUT_UNSAFE, analyzes some new features in the Esplora block chain explorer, provides information about an updated node ban list, and links to videos of talks at the recent MIT Bitcoin Club Expo. Also provided are a new weekly section about adoption of bech32 sending support and the normal list of notable changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Mar 12, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #37
This week’s newsletter notes a vulnerability in Bitcoin Core versions that are already past end-of-life, asks for help testing release candidates of the next major version of Bitcoin Core, provides an update on the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list, describes recent discussions from the list, and links to a chapter about payment batching in Optech’s work-in-progress scaling techniques book. Also included are descriptions of several notable commits in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Mar 5, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #36
This week’s newsletter links to the announcement of the C-Lightning 0.7 upgrade, notes a service outage for the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list, and describes a proposed soft fork to eliminate several old problems in the Bitcoin consensus protocol. Also included are summaries of notable commits in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Feb 26, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #35
This week’s newsletter describes the availability of a libsecp256k1 fork implementing BIP-Schnorr compatible signatures, lists popular questions and answers for February from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, and describes notable merges in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Feb 19, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #34
This week’s newsletter summarizes a discussion about output tagging for BIP118 SIGHASH_NOINPUT_UNSAFE, announces merges that will make it possible to pair Bitcoin Core’s built-in wallet in watching-only mode with a hardware wallet, and describes the completion of the feature freeze for the next Bitcoin Core release. Also summarized are numerous code and documentation changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Feb 12, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #33
This week’s newsletter announces the newest version of LND, briefly describes a tool for generating bitcoin ownership proofs, and links to an Optech study about the usability of Replace-by-Fee. Also included are summaries of notable code changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Feb 5, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #32
This week’s newsletter includes an announcement of the 2019 Chaincode Residency program, summarizes a few talks from the Stanford Blockchain Conference, and provides the usual list of notable code changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jan 29, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #31
This week’s newsletter summarizes a post about the privacy-improving payjoin proposal, links to top-voted questions and answers from Bitcoin Stack Exchange, and describes another busy week worth of notable commits in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jan 22, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #30
This week’s newsletter describes a proposed LN feature to allow making spontaneous payments and provides our longest-ever list of notable code changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jan 15, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #29
This week’s newsletter announces a security upgrade for C-Lightning, describes a paper and additional research into wallets that accidentally revealed their private keys, and lists some notable code changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Jan 8, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #28
This week’s newsletter announces a new maintenance release of Bitcoin Core, describes continued discussion about new signature hashes, and links to a post about possible economic barriers to LN payments crossing different currencies. Descriptions of notable code changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects are also provided.
Dec 28, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #27: 2018 Year-in-Review Special
This week’s newsletter is a special year-end edition summarizing notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2018. Despite the extended length of this newsletter, we regret that it only covers a tiny fraction of the work put into dozens of open source projects by hundreds of contributors. Without those low-level contributions, the high-concept ideas described in this newsletter would be just empty words, and so we extend our most sincere thanks to all of you who contributed to Bitcoin development this year.
Dec 18, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #26
This week’s newsletter describes the new libminisketch library for bandwidth efficient set reconciliation, links to an email about Schnorr/Taproot plans, and mentions an upcoming LN protocol specification meeting. Also included are a list of notable code changes in the past week from popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Dec 11, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #25
This week’s newsletter suggests helping test a Bitcoin Core maintenance release candidate, provides a link to a modern block explorer whose code has been open sourced, and briefly describes a suggestion for signature hashes to optionally cover transaction size. Notable code changes made in the past week to popular infrastructure projects are also described.
Dec 4, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #24
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to tweak Bitcoin Core’s relay policy for related transactions to help simplify onchain fees for LN payments, mentions upcoming meetings about the LN protocol, and briefly describes a new LND release and work towards a Bitcoin Core maintenance release.
Nov 27, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #23
This week’s newsletter provides a reminder about potential feerate increases, summarizes suggested improvements to sighash flags to accompany BIP118 SIGHASH_NOINPUT_UNSAFE, and briefly describes a proposal to simplify fee bumping for LN commitment transactions. Also included are selected recent Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange and descriptions of notable code changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Nov 20, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #22
This week’s “wumbo-sized” newsletter provides a note about Bitcoin hash rate related to forks on other coins, summarizes several accepted goals for the Lightning Network protocol version 1.1 specification, and lists several notable commits in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Nov 13, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #21
This week’s newsletter summarizes a few discussions on the Lightning-Dev mailing list, suggests an opportunity to develop a new tool some users would find helpful, and provides summaries and links to some of the talks at the recent Chaincode Lightning Applications residency. Several notable code changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects are also described.
Nov 6, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #20
This week’s newsletter contains a security notice about the C implementation of bech32 address decoding, an analysis of a temporary reduction in the number of segwit blocks, a link to an interesting discussion about future features for LN payments, and a few notable code changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Oct 30, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #19
This week’s newsletter suggests an update for C-Lightning users, describes a discussion about BIP69 deterministic input/output ordering on the mailing list, notes public overt ASICBoost support is available for miners using Antminer S9, and provides links to resources about both Square’s open sourced Subzero HSM-based multisig cold storage solution and the recent Lightning Network Residency and Hackday in New York City. Also included are selected recent Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange and descriptions of notable code changes in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Oct 23, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #18
This week’s newsletter contains a warning about communicating with Bitcoin nodes using RPC over unencrypted connections, links to two new papers about creating fast multiparty ECDSA keys and signatures that could reduce transaction fees for multisig users, and lists some notable merges from popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Oct 16, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #17
This week’s newsletter briefly describes a proposal for splicing Lightning Network payment channels, links to videos and transcripts of talks from the Edge Dev++ training sessions, and summarizes some transcripts made during last week’s CoreDev.tech event.
Oct 9, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #16: Scaling Bitcoin Special
This week’s newsletter consists entirely of summaries of several notable talks presented at the Scaling Bitcoin workshop last weekend, since there was very little to report in our usual Action Items, News, and Notable Code Changes sections. We hope to return to our usual format next week.
Oct 2, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #15
This week’s newsletter includes a notice of Bitcoin Core 0.17’s impending release, links to the backport releases of Bitcoin Core 0.15 and 0.14 to fix the CVE-2018-17144 duplicate inputs bug for those users unable to run more recent releases, a brief description of a chainsplit on testnet, and links to notable merges in Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Sep 25, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #14
This week’s newsletter includes action items and news related to last week’s security release of Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 and Bitcoin Core 0.17RC4, popular questions and answers from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange over the past month, and short descriptions of notable merges made to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Sep 18, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #13
This week’s newsletter includes action items related to the security release of Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 and Bitcoin Core 0.17RC4, the newly-proposed BIP322, and Optech’s upcoming Paris workshop; a link to the C-Lightning 0.6.1 release, more information about BIP322, and some details about the Bustapay proposal; plus brief descriptions of notable merges in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Sep 11, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #12
This week’s newsletter references a discussion about BIP151 encryption for the peer-to-peer network protocol, provides an update on compatibility between Bitcoin and the W3C Web Payments draft specification, and briefly describes some notable merges in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Sep 4, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #11
This week’s newsletter includes a reminder to please help test the release candidate for Bitcoin Core’s next version, information about the development of Optech’s new public dashboard, summaries of two discussions on the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list, and notable commits from Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Aug 28, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #10
This week’s newsletter includes information about the first published release candidate for Bitcoin Core, news about BIP151 P2P protocol encryption and a potential future soft fork, top questions and answers from Bitcoin Stack Exchange, and some notable merges in popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
Aug 21, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #9
This week’s newsletter includes a request to help test the next version of Bitcoin Core, short descriptions of projects Bitcoin Core contributors are working on, and a list of notable merges during the past week.
Aug 14, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #8
This week’s newsletter includes the usual dashboard and action items, news about the importance of allowing secure and anonymous responsible disclosure of bugs, a potential new payment protocol that can improve privacy on Bitcoin without any consensus rule changes, shaving one byte off the size of every transaction signature, a new restriction on the P2P network protocol, and lowering the minimum transaction relay fee—plus a few notable commits from the Bitcoin Core, LND, and C-Lightning projects.
Aug 7, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #7
This week’s newsletter includes the usual dashboard and action items, a link to discussion about generalized Bitcoin contracts over Lightning Network, a brief description of a recently-announced library for scalability-enhancing BLS signatures, and some notable commits from the Bitcoin Core, LND, and C-Lightning projects.
Jul 31, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #6
This week’s newsletter includes the usual dashboard and action items, a feature article by developer Anthony Towns about the consolidation of four million UTXOs at Xapo, news about possible upgrades to Bitcoin’s script system, links to a few highly-voted questions and answers on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, and some notable commits in the development branches of the Bitcoin Core, Lightning Network Daemon (LND), and C-lightning projects.
Jul 24, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #5
This week’s newsletter includes information about a new language to describe output scripts, an update on Bitcoin Core’s support for partially signed Bitcoin transactions, and news on several other notable Bitcoin Core merges.
Jul 17, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #4
This week’s newsletter includes news and action items about a feature freeze for the next major version of Bitcoin Core, increasing transaction fees, a likely renaming of the proposed SIGHASH_NOINPUT flag, and several notable recent Bitcoin Core merges.
Jul 10, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #3
This week’s newsletter includes news and action items about minimum fees and the upcoming Bitcoin Core release, a special feature on a Schnorr signature proposal, and a write-up of the recent Building on Bitcoin conference in Lisbon.
Jul 3, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #2
Continued discussion over graftroot safety, BIP174 Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (PSBT) officially marked as proposed, and discussion of Dandelion transaction relay.
Jun 26, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #1
Announces a pending vulnerability disclosure for older Bitcoin Core releases, links to a PR about improved coin selection, and discusses dynamic wallet loading and unloading in Bitcoin Core multiwallet mode.
Jun 8, 2018
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #0
A trial run of the Optech newsletter including news about the `OP_CODESEPARATOR` opcode, BetterHash mining protocol, and BIP157/158 compact block filters.