This week’s newsletter includes our regular sections with announcements of new releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.

News

No significant news this week was found in any of our sources.

Releases and release candidates

New releases and release candidates for popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects. Please consider upgrading to new releases or helping to test release candidates.

  • ● LND 0.20.0-beta.rc4 is a release candidate for a new version of this popular LN node implementation that introduces multiple bug fixes, a new noopAdd HTLC type, support for P2TR fallback addresses on BOLT11 invoices, and many RPC and lncli additions and improvements. See the release notes.

Notable code and documentation changes

Notable recent changes in Bitcoin Core, Core Lightning, Eclair, LDK, LND, libsecp256k1, Hardware Wallet Interface (HWI), Rust Bitcoin, BTCPay Server, BDK, Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs), Lightning BOLTs, Lightning BLIPs, Bitcoin Inquisition, and BINANAs.

  • ● Bitcoin Core #30595 introduces a C header that serves as an API for libbitcoinkernel (see Newsletter #191, #198, #367), enabling external projects to interface with Bitcoin Core’s block validation and chainstate logic via a reusable C library. Currently, it is limited to operations on blocks and has feature parity with the now-defunct libbitcoin-consensus (see Newsletter #288). Use cases libbitcoinkernel include alternative node implementations, an Electrum server index builder, a silent payment scanner, a block analysis tool, and a script validation accelerator, among others.

  • ● Bitcoin Core #33443 reduces excessive logging when replaying blocks after a restart that interrupted a reindex. Now, it emits one message for the full range of blocks being processed, as well as additional progress logs every 10,000 blocks, rather than one log per block.

  • ● Core Lightning #8656 makes P2TR the default address when using the newaddr endpoint without specifying an address type, replacing P2WPSH.

  • ● Core Lightning #8671 adds an invoice_msat field to the htlc_accepted hook, enabling plugins to override the effective invoice amount during payment checks. Specifically, it uses the HTLC’s amount when it differs from the invoice amount. This is useful in cases when an LSP charges a fee to forward an HTLC.

  • ● LDK #4204 enables peers to abort a splice without force-closing the channel, as long as it happens before signatures are exchanged. Previously, any tx_abort during splice negotiation would unnecessarily trigger a force close; now this only happens after signatures have been exchanged.

  • ● BIPs #2022 updates BIP3 (see Newsletter #344) to clarify how BIP numbers are assigned. “A number may be considered assigned only after it has been publicly announced in the pull request by a BIP Editor.” Announcements on social media or a provisional entry to the internal editor notes should not constitute an assignment.

Want more?

For more discussion about the topics mentioned in this newsletter, join us for the weekly Bitcoin Optech Recap on Riverside.fm at 16:30 UTC on November 18. The discussion is also recorded and will be available from our podcasts page.