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Publications

Recent publications from our blog posts and newsletters.

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 StackExchange 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 StackExchange 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 StackExchange 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 12, 2019
New Website Feature: Topics Index
Announcement of a new index of topics frequently mentioned on the Optech website with an initial set of 40 topics and a plan to expand that over the next year to 100 topics.
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 StackExchange.
Oct 29, 2019
Bitcoin Optech Schnorr Taproot Workshop
A self-study course for learning about the schnorr/taproot softfork proposal.
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.