Bitcoin Optech Podcast

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Bitcoin Optech Podcast episodes

January 28, 2025 Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #338 Recap
Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by Andrew Toth and Dave Harding to discuss ⁠Newsletter #338⁠.

News
- Draft BIP for unspendable keys in descriptors (0:49)
- PSBTv2 integration testing (9:55)
- Correction about offchain DLCs (15:25)

Changes to services and client software
- Bull Bitcoin Mobile Wallet adds payjoin (28:10)
- Bitcoin Keeper adds miniscript support (28:52)
- Nunchuk adds taproot MuSig2 features (29:26)
- Jade Plus signing device announced (32:08)
- Coinswap v0.1.0 released (32:36)
- Bitcoin Safe 1.0.0 released (35:14)
- Bitcoin Core 28.0 policy demonstration (35:41)
- Rust-payjoin 0.21.0 released (36:21)
- PeerSwap v4.0rc1 (37:34)
- Joinpool prototype using CTV (38:24)
- Rust joinstr library announced (39:58)
- Strata bridge announced (40:36)
Releases and release candidates
- BTCPay Server 2.0.6 (41:41)
Notable code and documentation changes
- Bitcoin Core #31397 (42:19)
- Eclair #2896 (44:21)
- LDK #3408 (46:02)
- LND #9405 (47:57)
50 min
January 21, 2025 Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #337 Recap
Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by vnprc to discuss ⁠⁠Newsletter #337⁠⁠.

News
- Continued discussion about rewarding pool miners with tradeable ecash shares (0:35)
- Offchain DLCs (38:32)

Releases and release candidates
- LDK v0.1 (39:34)
Notable code and documentation changes
- Eclair #2936 (41:32)
- Rust Bitcoin #3792 (42:46)
- BDK #1789 (43:42)
- BIPs #1687 (46:39)
- BIPs #1396 (50:15)

53 min
January 14, 2025Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #336 Recap
Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by Abubakar Sadiq Ismail, Gregory Sanders, and Daniel Roberts to discuss ⁠Newsletter #336⁠.
News
Investigating mining pool behavior before fixing a Bitcoin Core bug (1:07)

Contract-level relative timelocks (15:04)

Multiparty LN-Symmetry variant with penalties for limiting published updates (29:06)

Releases and release candidates
Bitcoin Core 28.1 (39:54)

BDK 0.30.1 (40:45)

LDK v0.1.0-beta1 (42:01)

Notable code and documentation changes
Bitcoin Core #28121 (42:22)

BDK #1592 (43:14)
48 min
January 07, 2025Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #335 Recap
Dave Harding and Mike Schmidt are joined by Yuval Kogman, Jeremy Rubin, and Steve Myers to discuss ⁠Newsletter #335⁠.
News
Deanonymization attacks against centralized coinjoin (1:39)

Updated ChillDKG draft (14:09)

Changing consensus
CTV enhancement opcodes (18:41)

Adjusting difficulty beyond 256 bits (31:52)

Transitory soft forks for cleanup soft forks (33:44)

Quantum computer upgrade path (48:09)

Consensus cleanup timewarp grace period (56:10)

Releases and release candidates
BDK wallet-1.0.0 (1:06:44)

LND 0.18.4-beta (1:17:28)

Core Lightning v24.11.1 (1:18:13)

Bitcoin Core 28.1rc2 (1:18:47)

LDK v0.1.0-beta1 (1:19:37)

Notable code and documentation changes
Bitcoin Core #31223 (1:20:19)

Eclair #2888 (1:21:09)

LDK #3495 (1:22:35)

LDK #3436 (1:24:31)

LDK #3435 (1:25:02)

LDK #3365 (1:26:04)

LDK #3340 (1:26:41)

BDK #1670 (1:28:47)

BIPs #1689 (1:31:45)

BIPs #1697 (1:33:49)

BLIPs #52 (1:34:21)

BLIPs #54 (1:35:40)
1 hr 38 min
December 23, 2024Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #334: 2024 Year-in-Review Special Recap
Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by Dave Harding, Niklas Gögge, Gloria Zhao, and Rearden to discuss ⁠Newsletter #334: 2024 Year-in-Review Special⁠.
January
Fee-dependent timelocks (16:18)

Optimized contract protocol exits (17:20)

LN-Symmetry proof-of-concept implementation (18:22)

February
Replace by feerate (22:32)

Human-readable payment instructions (27:25)

Improved ASMap generation (28:09)

LN dual funding (32:33)

Trustless betting on future feerates (32:56)

Summary 2024: Vulnerability disclosures (7:05)

March
BINANAs and BIPs (33:33)

Enhanced feerate estimation (34:41)

More efficient transaction sponsorship (46:08)

April
Consensus cleanup (50:06)

Reforming the BIPs process (51:08)

Inbound routing fees (53:10)

Weak blocks (54:01)

Restarting testnet (57:43)

Developers arrested (1:00:06)

Summary 2024: Cluster mempool (1:01:10)

May
Silent payments (1:06:51)

BitVMX (1:07:37)

Anonymous usage tokens (1:09:50)

LN channel upgrades (1:12:00)

Ecash for pool miners (1:13:33)

Miniscript specification (1:14:54)

Utreexo beta (1:16:16)

June
LN payment feasibility and channel depletion (1:18:17)

Quantum-resistant transaction signing (1:20:02)

Summary 2024: P2P transaction relay (1:20:39)

July
Blinded paths for BOLT11 invoices (1:31:07)

ChillDKG key generation for threshold signatures (1:31:47)

BIPs for MuSig and threshold signatures (1:32:18)

August
Hyperion network simulator (1:33:00)

Full RBF (1:33:56)

Summary 2024: Covenants and script upgrades (2:08)

September
Hybrid jamming mitigation tests and tweaks (1:35:10)

Shielded CSV (1:38:40)

LN offline payments (1:41:22)

October
BOLT12 offers (1:42:34)

Mining interfaces, block withholding, and share validation cost (1:43:13)

Summary 2024: Major releases of popular infrastructure projects (1:50:41)

November
SuperScalar timeout tree channel factories (1:51:19)

Fast and cheap low-value offchain payment resolution (1:53:29)

Summary 2024: Bitcoin Optech (1:55:17)
2 hr
December 18, 2024Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #333 Recap
Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by Dave Harding, /dev/fd0, and Gloria Zhao to discuss Newsletter #333.

News
Vulnerability allowing theft from LN channels with miner assistance (1:11)

Deanonymization vulnerability affecting Wasabi and related software (12:00)

Insights into channel depletion (18:12)

Poll of opinions about covenant proposals (31:14)

Incentive-based pseudo-covenants (41:49)

Bitcoin Core developer meeting summaries (46:45)

Bitcoin Core PR Review Club
Track and use all potential peers for orphan resolution (48:18)

Changes to services and client software
Java-based HWI released (1:00:32)

Saving Satoshi Bitcoin development education game announced (1:01:24)

Neovim Bitcoin Script plugin (1:02:19)

Proton Wallet adds RBF (1:03:36)

Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange
How long does Bitcoin Core store forked chains? (1:03:51)

What is the point of solo mining pools? (1:05:02)

Is there a point to using P2TR over P2WSH if I only want to use the script path? (1:11:17)

Releases and release candidates
Core Lightning 24.11 (1:13:23)

BTCPay Server 2.0.4 (1:16:59)

LND 0.18.4-beta.rc2 (1:17:23)

Bitcoin Core 28.1RC1 (1:17:44)

BDK 1.0.0-beta.6 (1:18:36)

Notable code and documentation changes
Bitcoin Core #31096 (1:18:58)

Bitcoin Core #31175 (1:19:51)

Bitcoin Core #31112 (1:21:37)

LDK #3446 (1:22:56)

Rust Bitcoin #3682 (1:26:13)

BTCPay Server #5743 (1:27:17)

BDK #1756 (1:30:23)

BIPs #1535 (1:31:12)

BOLTs #1180 (1:32:33)
1 hr 35 min
December 12, 2024Bitcoin Optech: Channel Depletion Research Deep Dive Podcast
Dave Harding and Mike Schmidt are joined by René Pickhardt and Christian Decker to discuss Pickhardt’s ⁠Lightning Network channel depletion research⁠.
Summary of Pickhardt's research (1:01)

Why look at wealth distributions? (5:45)

What can be learned from depletion? (11:38)

Circular rebalancing (13:33)

What determines where the spanning tree is? (15:28)

Mitigating depletion (20:14)

Adjacent channels and their impact (26:39)

Multiparty channels, channel factories, and Ark (29:52)

Hub-and-spoke topology discussion (41:06)

What real world data would inform the theoretical? (54:54)
59 min
December 10, 2024Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #332 Recap
Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by Antoine Riard and Antoine Poinsot to discuss ⁠Newsletter #332⁠.
News
Transaction censorship vulnerability (0:55)

Continued discussion about consensus cleanup soft fork proposal (19:20)

Releases and release candidates
Eclair v0.11.0 (46:45)

LDK v0.0.125 (47:26)

Core Lightning 24.11rc3 (47:59)

LND 0.18.4-beta.rc1 (48:21)

Bitcoin Core 28.1RC1 (48:34)

Notable code and documentation changes
Bitcoin Core #30708 (49:15)

Core Lightning #7832 (50:32)

LND #8270 (51:36)

LND #8390 (52:49)

BIPs #1534 (55:49)
59 min
December 09, 2024Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #331 Recap
Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by Anthony Towns to discuss ⁠Newsletter #331⁠.
News
Lisp dialect for Bitcoin scripting (0:48)

Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange
How does ColliderScript improve Bitcoin and what features does it enable? (43:24)

Why do standardness rules limit transaction weight? (48:10)

Is the scriptSig spending an PayToAnchor output expected to always be empty? (56:16)

What happens to the unused P2A outputs? (57:13)

Why doesn't Bitcoin's PoW algorithm use a chain of lower-difficulty hashes? (1:01:47)

Clarification on false value in Script (1:04:38)

What is this strange microtransaction in my wallet? (1:06:02)

Are there any UTXOs that can not be spent? (1:09:04)

Why was BIP34 not implemented via the coinbase tx's locktime or nSequence? (1:13:15)

Releases and release candidates
Core Lightning 24.11rc2 (1:15:19)

BDK 0.30.0 (1:15:49)

LND 0.18.4-beta.rc1 (1:16:16)

Notable code and documentation changes
Bitcoin Core #31122 (1:17:17)

Core Lightning #7852 (1:20:25)

Core Lightning #7740 (1:21:27)

Core Lightning #7719 (1:22:48)

Eclair #2935 (1:23:47)

LDK #3137 (1:24:34)

LND #8337 (1:26:22)
1 hr 29 min
November 26, 2024Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #330 Recap
Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by ZmnSCPxj, Vojtěch Strnad, Moonsettler, Brandon Black, Ethan Heilman, and Dusty Daemon to discuss Newsletter #330.
1 hr 33 min