How can lightning users secure themselves even further? Just like how hardware wallets and secure elements can help secure your cold storage coins, Validating Lightning Signer (VLS) is a project aiming to help improve the way lightning security works. In this conversation with project co-founder Ken Sedgwick, we chat:

 Why VLS is needed
 How VLS works
  Implementing part of the lightning state machine
  What rules are covered? 
  What lightning implementations are supported? 
  The impact of lightning protocol changes
  Interactions with watchtowers? 
  How you can get involved

Links:

  Twitter: @VLSProject
  Site: Validating Lightning Signer

Sponsors:

  Pacific Bitcoin Festival (code LIVERA)
  CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
  Mempool.space
  Base58 

Stephan Livera links:

  Follow me on Twitter @stephanlivera
  Subscribe to the podcast


SLP502 Validating Lightning Signer - Ken Sedgwick

Join Stephan as he interviews the sharpest economic and technical minds in Bitcoin &amp; Austrian Economics to help you understand how money is changing and evolving. Leading names in the world of Bitcoin join the show to share their insights, whether they are developers, CEOs, economists, authors, analysts and more.

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Silent Payments is a new approach to improving privacy and useability of Bitcoin. Imagine not needing to manually create new addresses? Josibake and Ruben Somsen join me to discuss some of the ins and outs of Silent Payments. We discuss:

 Silent Payments overview

 Contrast with other techniques such as BIP47 

  Light client support

  Stopping address re use

  Base layer privacy discussion


Links:

  X: @josibake

  X: @SomsenRuben

  BIP: Silent Payments

  Tracking progress in Bitcoin Core/libsecp256k1

  Informational website from sethforprivacy : Privacy-preserving static addresses for Bitcoin


Sponsors:

  Swan.com (code LIVERA)

  CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)

  Mempool.space


Stephan Livera links:

  Follow me on X: @stephanlivera

  Subscribe to the podcast

  Subscribe to Substack




Timestamps:
(00:00) - Intro
(01:01) - Overview of Silent Payments (SP)
(03:15) - History of the SP idea & contrast with other methods
Add more
(14:36) - Current status of SP development & adoption
(17:49) - Testing light clients for SP
(21:50) - The Silent Payment Experience
(26:31) - Light client support
(31:20) - What is a light client?
(38:05) - Sponsors
(41:16) - Spend Key & Scan Key 
(42:37) - XPUB vs. Silent Payments
(44:42) - Reducing address re-use with SP
(49:29) - Labeling with Silent Payments
(53:14) - Ease of use and compatibility with Lightning 
(57:03) - Overcoming the ‘silver bullet’ mindset
(01:10:50) - Composability with Silent Payments
(01:12:46) - Silent Payments summary
(01:14:06) - Closing Thoughts

Silent Payments: A Bitcoin username? With Josibake and Ruben Somsen SLP579

Skot joins me to talk about his project to bring affordable, energy efficient, open source mining to home miners. We discuss:

 The current state of open source in bitcoin mining

 Bitaxe overview

 Why do people do this?

 Price and how to set one up

  Mining pools

  Decentralisation


Links:

  X: @skot9000

  Site: Bitaxe.org


Sponsors:

  Swan.com (code LIVERA)

  CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)

  Mempool.space

  Nomadcapitalist.com/apply


Stephan Livera links:

  Follow me on X: @stephanlivera

  Subscribe to the podcast

  Subscribe to Substack




Bitaxe: The Open Source Bitcoin Miner with Skot - SLP578

Rusty Russell rejoins me on the show to talk about a new idea for a bitcoin soft fork that hopefully avoids some of the ‘horse trading’ dynamic that existed amongst other proposals. Listen in to learn more about the different paradigm that Rusty introduces here, so that developers can build more functionality and efficiency in, hopefully so that more people can use Bitcoin in self-custody. 

 Bitcoin Script background

 GSR overview

  GSR benefits 

  What is varops 

  Contrast with APO or LNHANCE?

  Will it enable shitcoins and spam?


Relevant previous episodes:

  SLP565 Great Consensus Clean up, MEVil and LN isn’t dead – Steve Lee and Matt Corallo

  SLP573 A Shift in Bitcoin Developer Thought? with Brandon Black (aka reardencode)


Links:

  Rusty’s BTC plus plus talk on GSR

  https://x.com/rusty_twit 


Sponsors:

  Swan.com (code LIVERA)

  CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)

  Mempool.space


Stephan Livera links:

  Follow me on X: @stephanlivera

  Subscribe to the podcast

  Subscribe to Substack




Great Script Restoration with Rusty Russell SLP577


Dan Gould of the PayJoin Dev Kit (sponsored by Spiral and Opensats) joins me to discuss how Bitcoin privacy could be improved with more PayJoin adoption. What’s more, it might also benefit users in consolidating their wallets or potentially even fee savings. We discuss how this could be integrated into more bitcoin wallets. 

 What is a PayJoin?
 How it helps privacy
  Other benefits in efficiency
  Downsides and trade offs
  Changes with the v2 PayJoin protocol
  PayJoin Directory
  Payjoin Dev Kit


Links:

  X: @bitgould 
  X: @payjoindevkit
  Site: PayjoinDevKit.org 
  Site: Payjoin.org 

Sponsors:

  Swan.com (code LIVERA)
  CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
  Mempool.space

Stephan Livera links:

  Follow me on X: @stephanlivera
  Subscribe to the podcast
  Subscribe to Substack




Payjoin Dev Kit for Bitcoin Privacy - Dan Gould SLP576

Adam Sullivan, CEO of Core Scientific joins me today as we chat about:

 Going through bankruptcy as a Bitcoin miner
 Debt financing
  Role of capital structure in mining
  What makes Core Scientific different?
  Centralisation of mining pools
  Fee dynamics going forward
  2025 outlook on Mining

Links:

  X: @_Adam_Sullivan1
  Core Scientific: Corescientific.com

Sponsors:

  Swan.com (code LIVERA)
  CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
  Mempool.space

Stephan Livera links:

  Follow me on X: @stephanlivera
  Subscribe to the podcast
  Subscribe to Substack


SLP502 Validating Lightning Signer - Ken Sedgwick

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