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Newsletters

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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange 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 StackExchange, 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 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 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 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 StackExchange 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange 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 StackExchange 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange 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 StackExchange 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 StackExchange 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 StackExchange, 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 StackExchange, 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.