Bitcoin Optech newsletter #385: 2025 Year-in-Review Special is here: - notes Bitcoin developments during each month of 2025 - feature: Vulnerability disclosures - feature: Quantum - feature: Soft fork proposals - feature: Stratum v2 - feature: Major releases of popular infrastructure projects - feature: Optech
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #385: 2025 Year-in-Review Special
The eighth annual Bitcoin Optech Year-in-Review special summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2025.
 In 2025, Optech summarized more than a dozen vulnerability disclosures...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #385: 2025 Year-in-Review Special
The eighth annual Bitcoin Optech Year-in-Review special summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2025.
 With the increased attention on the potential for a future quantum computer to weaken or break the Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm (ECDL) hardness assumption that Bitcoin relies on to prove the ownership of coins, several conversations and proposals were put forward throughout the year to discuss and mitigate the impact of such a development.
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #385: 2025 Year-in-Review Special
The eighth annual Bitcoin Optech Year-in-Review special summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2025.
 This year saw a bevy of discussions around soft fork proposals, ranging from the tightly scoped and minimally impactful, to the broadly scoped and powerful…
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #385: 2025 Year-in-Review Special
The eighth annual Bitcoin Optech Year-in-Review special summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2025.
 Stratum v2 is a mining protocol designed to replace the original Stratum protocol used between miners and mining pools. Throughout 2025, Bitcoin Core received several updates to better support Stratum v2 implementations....
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #385: 2025 Year-in-Review Special
The eighth annual Bitcoin Optech Year-in-Review special summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2025.
 Optech covered major releases of popular infrastructure projects throughout the year...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #385: 2025 Year-in-Review Special
The eighth annual Bitcoin Optech Year-in-Review special summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2025.
 In Optech’s eighth year, we published: - 50 newsletters - over 80,000 words, a 225pg book equivalent - over 60hrs of podcasts, with 500,000 words of transcripts w/75 guests - 150+ non-English translations
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #385: 2025 Year-in-Review Special
The eighth annual Bitcoin Optech Year-in-Review special summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2025.
 A special thank you After contributing as the primary author for 376 consecutive Bitcoin Optech newsletters, Dave Harding stepped back from contributing regularly this year. We cannot thank Harding enough for anchoring the newsletter for eight years and all of the Bitcoin education, elucidation, and understanding he brought the community. We are eternally grateful and wish him all the best. Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this special newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 17:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Riverside.FM Studio
Matt Morehouse and Salvatore Ingala joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #384: - Vulnerabilities fixed in LND 0.19.0 - A virtualized secure enclave for hardware signing devices - 7 updates to services and client software - 3 questions from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange - And More You can listen on our website:
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #384 Recap Podcast
Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Matt Morehouse and Salvatore Ingala to discuss Newsletter #384.
 Fountain:
Fountain
Bitcoin Optech Podcast • Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #384 Recap • Listen on Fountain
Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Matt Morehouse and Salvatore Ingala to discuss ⁠Newsletter #384...
 Spotify:
Spotify
Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #384 Recap
Bitcoin Optech Podcast · Episode
 Apple Podcasts:
Apple Podcasts
Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #384 Recap
Podcast Episode · Bitcoin Optech Podcast · 12/16/2025 · 1h 13m
Bruno Garcia and Liam Eagen joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #369: News 24:56 Update on differential fuzzing of Bitcoin and LN implementations 0:58 Garbled locks for accountable computing contracts Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange 39:45 Is it possible to recover a private key from an aggregate public key under strong assumptions? 41:24 Are all taproot addresses vulnerable to quantum computing? 45:20 Why cant we set the chainstate obfuscation key? 52:09 Is it possible to revoke a spending branch after a block height? 53:45 Configure Bitcoin Core to use onion nodes in addition to IPv4 and IPv6 nodes? Releases and release candidates 54:22 Bitcoin Core 29.1rc2 56:45 Core Lightning v25.09rc4 Notable code and documentation changes 57:37 Bitcoin Core #31802 1:04:46 LDK #3979 1:06:19 LND #10102 1:07:04 Rust Bitcoin #4907 You can listen on our website:
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #369 Recap Podcast
Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by Bruno Garcia and Liam Eagen to discuss Newsletter #369.
 Fountain:
Fountain
Bitcoin Optech Podcast • Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #369 Recap • Listen on Fountain
Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by Bruno Garcia and Liam Eagen to discuss Newsletter #369.News● Update on differential fuzz...
 Spotify:
Spotify
Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #369 Recap
Bitcoin Optech Podcast · Episode
 Apple Podcasts:
Apple Podcasts
Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #369 Recap
Podcast Episode · Bitcoin Optech Podcast · 09/02/2025 · 1h 8m
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #347 is here: - describes upfront and hold fees in LN based on burnable outputs - summarizes discussion about testnets 3 and 4 - announces a plan to relay certain transactions containing taproot annexes - summarizes popular Q&A from Stack Exchange - Bitcoin Core 29.0rc2 - Optech Newsletter #347 Recap
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #347
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to allow LN to support upfront and hold fees based on burnable outputs, summarizes discussion about t...
 John Law posted to Delving Bitcoin the summary of a paper he’s written about a protocol nodes can use to charge two additional types of fees for forwarding payments...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #347
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to allow LN to support upfront and hold fees based on burnable outputs, summarizes discussion about t...
 Sjors Provoost posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list to ask whether anyone was still using testnet3 now that testnet4 has been available for about six months...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #347
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to allow LN to support upfront and hold fees based on burnable outputs, summarizes discussion about t...
 Peter Todd announced to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list his plan to update his Bitcoin Core-based node, Libre Relay, to begin relaying transactions containing taproot annexes if they follow particular rules...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #347
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to allow LN to support upfront and hold fees based on burnable outputs, summarizes discussion about t...
 Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange: - Why is the witness commitment optional? - Can all consensus valid 64 byte transactions be (third party) malleated to change their size? - How long does it take for a transaction to propagate through the network? - Utility of longterm fee estimation - Why are two anchor outputs are used in the LN? - Why are there no BIPs in the 2xx range? - Why doesn’t Bech32 use the character “b”? - Bech32 error detection and correction reference implementation - How to safely spend/burn dust? - How is the refund transaction in Asymmetric Revocable Commitments constructed? - Which applications use ZMQ with Bitcoin Core?
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #347
This week’s newsletter describes a proposal to allow LN to support upfront and hold fees based on burnable outputs, summarizes discussion about t...
 Bitcoin Core 29.0rc2 is a release candidate for the next major version of the network’s predominate full node. Please see the version 29 testing guide.
GitHub
29.0 Release Candidate Testing Guide
Wiki for Bitcoin Core development. Contribute to bitcoin-core/bitcoin-devwiki development by creating an account on GitHub.
 Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Riverside.FM Studio
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #345 is here: - looks at an analysis of P2P traffic experienced by a typical full node - summarizes research into LN pathfinding - describes a new approach for creating probabilistic payments - recaps the "Stricter internal handling of invalid blocks " PR Review Meeting - Optech Newsletter #345 Recap on Riverside
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #345
This week’s newsletter looks at an analysis of P2P traffic experienced by a typical full node, summarizes research into LN pathfinding, and descr...
 Developer Virtu posted to Delving Bitcoin an analysis of the network traffic generated and received by his node in four different modes: initial block download (IBD), non-listening (outbound connections only), non-archival (pruned) listening, and archival listening...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #345
This week’s newsletter looks at an analysis of P2P traffic experienced by a typical full node, summarizes research into LN pathfinding, and descr...
 Sindura Saraswathi posted to Delving Bitcoin about research she conducted with Christian Kümmerle about finding optimal paths between LN nodes for sending payments in a single part...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #345
This week’s newsletter looks at an analysis of P2P traffic experienced by a typical full node, summarizes research into LN pathfinding, and descr...
 Robin Linus replied to the Delving Bitcoin thread about probabilistic payments with a conceptually simple script that allows two parties to each commit to an arbitrary amount of entropy that can later be revealed and xored together, to produce a value that can be used to determine which one of them receives a payment...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #345
This week’s newsletter looks at an analysis of P2P traffic experienced by a typical full node, summarizes research into LN pathfinding, and descr...
 'Stricter internal handling of invalid blocks' is a PR by mzumsande that improves the correctness of two non-consensus-critical and expensive-to-calculate validation fields by immediately updating them when a block is marked as invalid...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #345
This week’s newsletter looks at an analysis of P2P traffic experienced by a typical full node, summarizes research into LN pathfinding, and descr...
 Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Riverside.FM Studio
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #344 is here: - announces the disclosure of a vulnerability affecting old versions of LND - summarizes a discussion about the Bitcoin Core Project’s priorities - Changing consensus covering: Bitcoin Forking Guide, BIP360 pay-to-quantum-resistant-hash (P2QRH) updates, and Private block template marketplace to prevent centralizing MEV - Optech Newsletter #344 Recap on Riverside
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #344
This week’s newsletter announces the disclosure of a vulnerability affecting old versions of LND and summarizes a discussion about the Bitcoin Co...
 Matt Morehouse posted to Delving Bitcoin to announce the responsible disclosure of a vulnerability that affected LND versions before 0.18...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #344
This week’s newsletter announces the disclosure of a vulnerability affecting old versions of LND and summarizes a discussion about the Bitcoin Co...
 Several blog posts by Antoine Poinsot about the future of the Bitcoin Core project were linked in a thread on Delving Bitcoin...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #344
This week’s newsletter announces the disclosure of a vulnerability affecting old versions of LND and summarizes a discussion about the Bitcoin Co...
 Anthony Towns announced to Delving Bitcoin a guide to how to build community consensus for changes to Bitcoin’s consensus rules...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #344
This week’s newsletter announces the disclosure of a vulnerability affecting old versions of LND and summarizes a discussion about the Bitcoin Co...
 Developer Hunter Beast posted an update on his research into quantum resistance for BIP360 to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #344
This week’s newsletter announces the disclosure of a vulnerability affecting old versions of LND and summarizes a discussion about the Bitcoin Co...
 Matt Corallo and developer 7d5x9 posted to Delving Bitcoin about allowing parties to bid in public markets for selected space within miner block templates...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #344
This week’s newsletter announces the disclosure of a vulnerability affecting old versions of LND and summarizes a discussion about the Bitcoin Co...
 Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Riverside.FM Studio
Last week Bastien Teinturier Joost Jager joined @David A. Harding and @schmidty for #342: - settling channels w/o extra UTXOs - LN QoS flag - Ark SDK, Zaprite, Iris, Sparrow, Scure, py and rust bitcoinkernel libs, cbip32, Loop MuSig2 Catch up:
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #342 Recap Podcast
Dave Harding and Mike Schmidt are joined by Bastien Teinturier and Joost Jager discuss Newsletter #342.
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #343 is here: - summarizes a post about having full nodes ignore transactions that are relayed without being requested first - summarizes popular Q&A from Stack Exchange - Optech Newsletter #343 Recap on Riverside
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #343
This week’s newsletter summarizes a post about having full nodes ignore transactions that are relayed without being requested first. Also include...
 Antoine Riard posted to Bitcoin-Dev two draft BIPs that would allow a node to signal that it will no longer accept tx messages that it had not requested using an inv message, called unsolicited transactions...
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #343
This week’s newsletter summarizes a post about having full nodes ignore transactions that are relayed without being requested first. Also include...
 Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange: - What’s the rationale for how the loadtxsoutset RPC is set up? - Are there pinning attacks that RBF rule #3 makes impossible? - Unexpected locktime values - Why is it necessary to reveal a bit in a script path spend and check that it matches the parity of the Y coordinate of Q? - Why does Bitcoin Core use checkpoints?? - How does Bitcoin Core handle long reorgs? - What is discard feerate? - Policy to miniscript compiler
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #343
This week’s newsletter summarizes a post about having full nodes ignore transactions that are relayed without being requested first. Also include...
 Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Riverside.FM Studio
Earlier today @Murch and @schmidty discussed Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #341: - probabilistic payments - ephemeral anchors - Bitcoin network monitoring and orphan evictions - BIP3 - cluster mempool ... and more! Catch up:
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #341 Recap Podcast
Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt discuss Newsletter #341.
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #341 is here: - summarizes continued discussion about probabilistic payments - describes additional opinions about ephemeral anchor scripts for LN - relays statistics about evictions from the Bitcoin Core orphan pool - announces an updated draft for a revised BIP process - recaps the "Cluster mempool: introduce TxGraph" PR Review Meeting - adds a Probabilistic payments topic - Optech Newsletter #339 Recap on Riverside
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #341
This week’s newsletter summarizes continued discussion about probabilistic payments, describes additional opinions about ephemeral anchor scripts...
 Following Oleksandr Kurbatov’s post to Delving Bitcoin last week about emulating an OP_RAND opcode (see Newsletter #340), several discussions were started... Matt Morehouse replied to the thread about what ephemeral anchor script LN should use for future channels (see Newsletter #340). He expressed concerns about third-party fee griefing of transactions with P2A outputs... Developer 0xB10C posted to Delving Bitcoin with statistics about the number of transactions evicted from the orphan pools for his nodes... Mark “Murch” Erhardt posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list to announce that his draft BIP for a revised BIP process has been assigned the identifier BIP3 and is ready for additional review—possibly its last round of review before being merged and activated... 'Cluster mempool: introduce TxGraph' is a PR by sipa that introduces the TxGraph class, which encapsulates knowledge about the (effective) fees, sizes, and dependencies between all mempool transactions, but nothing else. It is part of the cluster mempool project and brings a comprehensive interface that allows interaction with the mempool graph through mutation, inspector, and staging functions... Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
Riverside.FM Studio