Bitcoin Optech Podcast

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Bruno Garcia to discuss ⁠Newsletter #388⁠.

News

● An overview of incremental mutation testing in Bitcoin Core (0:43)

● BIP process updated (18:53)

Releases and release candidates

● Bitcoin Core 30.2 (26:31)

● BTCPay Server 2.3.3 (27:23)

Notable code and documentation changes

● Bitcoin Core #33819 (28:42)

● Bitcoin Core #29415 (31:44)

● Core Lightning #8830 (42:16)

● Eclair #3233 (44:19)

● Eclair #3237 (47:59)

● LDK #4232 (50:00)

● LND #10296 (52:24)

● BTCPay Server #7068 (53:43)

● BIPs #1982 (55:37)

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by René Pickhardt and Craig Raw to discuss ⁠Newsletter #387⁠.

News

● Bitcoin Core wallet migration bug (0:55)

● Using Ark as a channel factory (7:47)

● Draft BIP for silent payment descriptors (29:02)

Releases and release candidates

● Bitcoin Core 30.2rc1 (58:34)

Notable code and documentation changes

● Bitcoin Core #34156 (59:32)

● Bitcoin Core #34085 (1:03:54)

● Bitcoin Core #34197 (1:07:43)

● Bitcoin Core #33135 (1:09:10)

● LDK #4213 (1:11:02)

● Eclair #3217 (1:15:39)

● LND #10367 (1:18:49)

● Rust Bitcoin #5450 (1:22:51)

● Rust Bitcoin #5434 (1:23:40)

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Anthony Towns and Mikhail Kudinov to discuss ⁠Newsletter #386⁠.

News

● Building a vault using blinded co-signers (1:04:09)

● Peer feature negotiation (1:40)

Changing consensus

● Year 2106 timestamp overflow uint64 migration (1:07:47)

● Relax BIP54 timestamp restriction for 2106 soft fork (1:11:36)

● Understanding and mitigating a CTV footgun (1:16:30)

● CTV activation meeting (1:21:00)

● `OP_CHECKCONSOLIDATION` to enable cheaper consolidations (1:23:11)

● Hash-based signatures for Bitcoin's post-quantum future (20:47)

Releases and release candidates

● BTCPay Server 2.3.0 (1:28:29)

Notable code and documentation changes

● Bitcoin Core #33657 (1:30:25)

● Bitcoin Core #32414 (1:33:23)

● Bitcoin Core #32545 (1:39:18)

● Bitcoin Core #33892 (1:42:13)

● Core Lightning #8784 (1:44:35)

● LND #9489 (1:45:54)

● BIPs #2051 (1:50:09)

● BOLTs #1299 (1:56:39)

● BOLTs #1305 (1:59:46)

Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by Bastien Teinturier, Rearden Code, and Pieter Wuille to discuss Newsletter #385: 2025 Year-in-Review Special.

January

● Updated ChillDKG draft (43:08)

● Offchain DLCs (45:53)

● Compact block reconstructions (2:29:27)

February

● Erlay update (1:53:55)

● LN ephemeral anchor scripts (0:50)

● Probabilistic payments (54:45)

March

● Bitcoin Forking Guide (3:29:35)

● Private block template marketplace to prevent centralizing MEV (3:05:28)

● LN upfront and hold fees using burnable outputs (13:12)

April

● SwiftSync speedup for initial block download (2:09:35)

● DahLIAS interactive aggregate signatures (3:26:02)

Summary 2025: Quantum (58:07)

May

● Cluster mempool (1:22:11)

● Increasing or removing Bitcoin Core’s OP_RETURN policy limit (2:45:43)

June

● Calculating the selfish mining danger threshold (2:20:39)

● Fingerprinting nodes using addr messages (3:11:38)

● Garbled locks (3:19:01)

Summary 2025: Soft fork proposals (26:57)

July

● Chain code delegation (49:07)

August

● Utreexo draft BIPs (2:15:57)

● Lowering the minimum relay feerate (2:39:52)

● Peer block template sharing (2:56:01)

● Differential fuzzing of Bitcoin and LN implementations (3:16:08)

Summary 2025: Stratum v2 (2:04:49)

September

● Details about the design of Simplicity (3:23:01)

● Partitioning and eclipse attacks using BGP interception (3:13:47)

October

● Discussions about arbitrary data (3:01:15)

● Channel jamming mitigation simulation results and updates (11:05)

November

● Comparing performance of ECDSA signature validation in OpenSSL vs. libsecp256k1 (2:01:47)

● Modeling stale rates by propagation delay and mining centralization (2:22:32)

● BIP3 and the BIP process (3:31:37)

● Bitcoin Kernel C API introduced (3:35:35)

December

● Splicing (7:33)

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Matt Morehouse and Salvatore Ingala to discuss ⁠Newsletter #384⁠.

News

● Critical vulnerabilities fixed in LND 0.19.0 (0:59)

● A virtualized secure enclave for hardware signing devices (21:11)

Changes to services and client software

● Interactive transaction visualization tool (37:16)

● BlueWallet v7.2.2 released (38:20)

● Stratum v2 updates (38:42)

● Auradine announces Stratum v2 support (40:18)

● LDK Node 0.7.0 released (41:58)

● BIP-329 Python Library 1.0.0 release (43:30)

● Bitcoin Safe 1.6.0 released (44:34)

Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange

● Does a clearnet connection to my Lightning node require a TLS certificate? (45:12)

● Why do different implementations produce different DER signatures for the same private key and hash? (45:58)

● Why is the miniscript `after` value limited at 0x80000000? (49:27)

Notable code and documentation changes

● Bitcoin Core #33528 (53:12)

● Bitcoin Core #33723 (54:17)

● Bitcoin Core #33993 (56:35)

● Bitcoin Core #33553 (59:54)

● Eclair #3220 (1:01:52)

● LDK #4231 (1:02:48)

● LND #10396 (1:05:40)

● BTCPay Server #7022 (1:08:26)

● Rust Bitcoin #5379 (1:09:32)

● BIPs #2050 (1:10:06)

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Moonsettler and Julian to discuss Newsletter #383.

News

● Consensus bug in NBitcoin library (1:04)

Changing consensus

● LNHANCE soft fork (24:00)

● Benchmarking the varops budget (5:09)

● SLH-DSA (SPHINCS) post-quantum signature optimizations (45:29)

Releases and release candidates

● Core Lightning v25.12 (1:02:24)

● LDK 0.2 (1:03:43)

Notable code and documentation changes

● Core Lightning #8728 (1:05:14)

● Core Lightning #8702 (1:06:55)

● Core Lightning #8735 (1:07:24)

● LDK #4226 (1:11:41)

● LND #10341 (1:12:49)

● BTCPay Server #6986 (1:14:00)

● BIPs #2015 (1:16:18)

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt discuss ⁠Newsletter #382⁠.

News

● Stats on compact block reconstructions updates (0:34)

● Motion to activate BIP3 (7:26)

Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange

● Do pruned nodes store witness inscriptions? (24:27)

● Increasing probability of block hash collisions when difficulty is too high (29:33)

● What is the purpose of the initial 0x04 byte in all extended public and private keys? (33:25)

Releases and release candidates

● LND v0.20.0-beta (34:57)

● Core Lightning v25.12rc1 (35:57)

Notable code and documentation changes

● Bitcoin Core #33872 (37:55)

● Bitcoin Core #33629 (42:05)

● Core Lightning #8677 (49:49)

● Core Lightning #8546 (51:28)

● Core Lightning #8682 (53:19)

● LDK #4197 (55:39)

● LDK #4234 (1:00:56)

● LDK #4148 (1:02:17)

● BDK #2027 (1:03:04)

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Antoine Poinsot and ZmnSCPxj to discuss Newsletter #381.

News

● Modeling stale rates by propagation delay and mining centralization (1:03)

● Private key handover for collaborative closure (30:55)

Changes to services and client software

● Arkade launches (52:32)

● Mempool monitoring mobile application (55:25)

● Web-based policy and miniscript IDE (56:25)

● Phoenix Wallet adds taproot channels (57:45)

● Nunchuk 2.0 launches (59:19)

● LN gossip traffic analysis tool announced (1:01:49)

Notable code and documentation changes

● Bitcoin Core #33745 (1:04:23)

● Core Lightning #8537 (1:09:28)

● Core Lightning #8608 (1:11:26)

● Core Lightning #8646 (1:13:34)

● Core Lightning #8569 (1:17:44)

● Core Lightning #8558 (1:22:46)

● LDK #4126 (1:24:11)

● LDK #4208 (1:26:37)

● LND #9432 (1:27:58)

● BOLTs #1284 (1:31:38)

● BOLTs #1044 (1:33:33)

Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by TheCharlatan to discuss Newsletter #380.

Releases and release candidates

● LND 0.20.0-beta.rc4 (1:30)

Notable code and documentation changes

● Bitcoin Core #30595 (2:56)

● Bitcoin Core #33443 (28:03)

● Core Lightning #8656 (29:42)

● Core Lightning #8671 (30:22)

● LDK #4204 (33:09)

● BIPs #2022 (34:45)

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Sebastian Falbesoner, PortlandHODL, Tadge Dryja, and Antoine Poinsot to discuss Newsletter #379.

News

● Comparing performance of ECDSA signature validation in OpenSSL vs. libsecp256k1 (1:47)

Changing consensus

● Multiple discussions about restricting data (14:05)

● Post-quantum signature aggregation (1:00:05)

● Native STARK proof verification in Bitcoin Script (1:18:47)

● BIP54 implementation and test vectors (35:47)

Releases and release candidates

● Core Lightning 25.09.2 (1:30:54)

● LND 0.20.0-beta.rc3 (1:31:44)

Notable code and documentation changes

● Bitcoin Core #31645 (1:32:34)

● Core Lightning #8636 (1:40:08)

● Core Lightning #8639 (1:43:18)

● Core Lightning #8635 (1:44:31)

● Eclair #3209 (1:46:25)

● Eclair #3206 (1:46:59)

● Eclair #3210 (1:49:31)

● LDK #4140 (1:54:13)

● LDK #4168 (1:59:12)

● Rust Bitcoin #5116 (2:01:06)

● BTCPay Server #6922 (2:05:05)