I’m joined by guests Matt Odell & BentheCarman to go through the list.

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Housekeeping

Software Releases & Project Updates

  • 00:13:54 Sparrow v1.7.2
    • Taproot wallets now supported on Bitcoin Core v24 or later using the new internal Cormorant library
    • Wallet fingerprints displayed as lifehashes on passphrase entry
    • Implemented BIP329 for importing and exporting wallet labels (Wallet Import and Export dialogs)
    • Tapsigner and Satscard support
    • Upgrade to HWI 2.2.0
  • 00:15:03 BTC Pay Server
    • v1.7.6
    • Two non-severe vulnerabilities fixed
    • Popular NFC plugin now built in
    • v1.7.5
    • Lightning addresses API
  • 00:16:57 Blixt 0.6.3
    • Translated to Italian
    • Bug fixes
  • 00:17:03 BISQ 1.9.9
    • This release is packed with improvements under the hood to improve resilience of the client and push further the decentralization of Bisq. Of course we have fixed lots of bugs across the board as well.
  • 00:17:31 Keet Mobile Alpha is Now Live on iOS and Android
    • Launching with instant messages at first and will be adding video and calls in the next iteration.
  • 00:19:17 Blockstream Jade 0.1.42
    • Register multisigs on Jade via QR
    • Wallet fingerprint displayed on Jade’s home screen
    • @nunchuk_io multisig QR support
  • 00:19:30 Electrum Personal Server v0.2.4
    • Fixed crash caused by deprecated RPC in Bitcoin Core 23.0
    • Added signet support
  • 00:20:11 Electrum 4.3.4
    • Various bug fixes.
    • Payserver and Trampoline improvement
  • 00:21:00 Specter v1.14.5
    • This release contains Spectrum, a plugin for running Specter via an Electrum server instead of a Bitcoin Core node.
    • The plugin is currently in alpha
  • 00:22:43 Liana 0.2rc1 (pre-release)
    • Multisig
    • Now supports descriptors with multiple keys both in the primary (non-timelocked) spending path and the recovery (timelocked) path.
    • GUI-specific:
    • You can now import and update Spend transaction drafts as PSBTs to collaboratively create and sign transactions.
    • When creating a new descriptor you can now set an alias for each key. Those will be displayed when inspecting a transaction’s signatories.
    • Amounts are now displayed with the sats in bold for better redability.
  • 00:23:51 Zeus v0.7.2
    • POS for Square Terminals
    • Payment Settings: allow the user to change their default fee limit
    • Receive via NFC (ie. Boltcards)
    • LNURL-auth support for LNDHub
    • Add ability to get rate suggestions from Mempool.space when closing a channel
    • Community Sponsors: support for Nostr profiles
    • New language support: Croatian
    • Enhanced iPad support
  • 00:25:52 Nunchuk Android v1.9.24
    • Improved support for Blockstream Jade
    • Improved support for Foundation Passport
    • Option to dismiss home banner
    • Bug fixes and UI improvements
  • 00:26:17 Muun 2.7.3
    • You can now set your wallet to prioritize Lightning for incoming transactions or show a unified QR code for BTC and LN.
  • 00:26:30 Blockstream Green Android v3.9.2
    • Added CSAT forms
  • 00:26:39 Breez 0.15 http Sync (Pre-release)
    • Neutrino sync over http
    • Add Tor support
    • Add German translation
    • Changed scan library
    • Fix episode ID in TLV
    • Various bug fixes
  • 00:27:10 Hexa Wallet v2.1.3
    • With this release, we’ve completely revamped the backend for using Hexa with your own node.
    • Now Hexa uses Fulcrum behind the scenes to help you enhance your privacy. You can also connect to more nodes now.
  • 00:27:37 BDK v0.27.0-rc.1
    • A maintenance release with a bump in project MSRV to 1.57.0, updated dependence and a few developer oriented improvements.
    • Improvements include better error formatting, don’t default to async/await for wasm32 and adding derived PartialEq and Eq on SyncTime.
  • 00:28:46 Mutiny Wallet
  • 00:32:12 nix-bitcoin-0.0.86
    • new dev tools and docs that help debugging and development
  • 00:32:34 MyNode v0.3.09
    • Add LndBoss v2.16.0
    • Add ability to append custom Bitcoin config
    • Add ability to append custom LND config
  • 00:32:55 Joinmarket v0.9.9
    • Onion messaging related fixes and changes
    • New public orderbook
    • Correct errors in transaction size estimation
    • Fixes to sendpayment
  • 00:33:46 Nostr
  • 00:35:09 Cashu
    • Release: Cashu JS wallet with multimint support and many bug fixes: https://cashu.me 👈
  • 00:35:28 Fedipool: Fedimint Could Mitigate Bitcoin Mining Pool Concerns
    • Fedimint is an emerging open source protocol that combines bitcoin, lightning, chaumian ecash, and federated custodians (called Guardians) to create community wallets that are easy to use, have strong privacy, reduced custodial risk, cheap and fast payments within the community, and interoperability with all bitcoin wallets.
    • Current Fedimint development is focused on easy to use consumer wallets that could replace usage of major custodial wallet providers such as Binance and Wallet of Satoshi, but what if the same tech was used to replace major custodial mining pools such as Foundry and AntPool.
  • 00:38:38 Alby v1.25.1: Reflections on the 1970s
    • Nostr is now moved out of the hidden “Alby labs”! 🎉 Every account in the Alby extension can now have Nostr keys making Alby the easiest way to manage your Nostr keys and use Nostr web clients. Now you can manage multiple Nostr identities in the extension.
    • With the Alby companion app for Tor we already made it possible and managed to allow people to use their nodes running behind Tor (thanks to libtor).
    • To make it even easier to connect to your self-custodial LND node Alby now supports Lightning Node Connect (LNC). LNC is Lightning Labs’ mechanism to create an encrypted connection to a LND node
    • you now can easily use lightning and Nostr apps safely with the Tor Browser or with an all-private window in Firefox
  • 00:40:32 The Bitcoin Company v1.25
    • Added lightning address auto-withdrawals
  • 00:41:14 Keeper v1.0.0
    • Now on mainnet
    • Use all your signing devices (hardware wallets) on mainnet now

Project spotlight

Boosts

  • 00:43:37 Thanks to everyone who streamed sats, and shoutout to our top boosters:
    • Anonymous (250K sats) “Another great episode”
    • Anonymous (50K sats) “real signal”
    • @apemithrandir (7,777 sats X3) “great talk!”
    • @marcellus (10K sats) “Great pod. You’ve created a very interesting and fun show. Keep doing it and keep building great HWW,”
    • @hgw39 (5K sats X2) “Great learnings and tips. Becoming one of my regular BTC listens now. Thanks!”
    • Jade Ox (10K sats) “Thanks your for this fabulous podcast - Niels”
    • @utxo_one (5K sats X2) “anything featuring the greatest mobile wallet ever ZEUS gets a boost”

Bitcoin Optech Newsletter

  • 236
    • 00:45:25 Serverless payjoin proposal
    • Dan Gould posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a proposal and proof of concept implementation for a serverless version of BIP78, the payjoin protocol.
    • Bitcoin Core #26471 reduces the default mempool capacity to 5MB (from 300MB) when a user turns on -blocksonly mode.
    • Since unused mempool memory is shared with dbcache, this change also reduces the default dbcache size in -blocksonly mode. Users may still configure a larger mempool capacity using the -maxmempool option.
  • 235
    • 00:45:42 Ephemeral anchors compared to SIGHASH_GROUP
    • Anthony Towns posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list an analysis comparing the recent ephemeral anchors proposal to an older SIGHASH_GROUP proposal.
    • Request for proof that an async payment was accepted
    • Valentine Wallace posted to the Lightning-Dev mailing list a request for researchers to investigate how someone making an async payment could receive proof that they paid
    • 00:46:28 Wallet Labels Export Format merged
  • 234
    • 00:45:50 Proposal for new vault-specific opcodes
    • James O’Beirne posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a proposal for a soft fork to add two new opcodes, OP_VAULT and OP_UNVAULT.
    • 00:45:58 Kraken announces sending to taproot addresses
    • In a recent blog post, Kraken announced they support withdrawing (sending) to bech32m addresses.
    • 00:46:02 Whirlpool coinjoin rust client library announced
    • The Samourai Whirlpool Client is a rust library for interacting with the Whirlpool coinjoin platform.
    • 00:46:06 Ledger supports miniscript Ledger’s Bitcoin firmware v2.1.0 release for its hardware signing devices supports miniscript, as announced previously.

News & Noteworthy

  • 00:47:23 Cash App adopts free and instant #bitcoin payments
  • 00:49:24 “Why do we have to be so conservative with Bitcoin soft-forks? What do we have to conserve? Bitcoin is a niche currency with very few users. Bitcoin is very far away from achieving its goal to become the world’s single currency. It will not be possible to get there without risks.” - Fiatjaf
  • 00:51:59 Congress’ FTX Problem: 1 in 3 Members Got Cash From Crypto Exchange’s Bosses [Coindesk]
    • More than one in three of the 535 senators and representatives in the U.S. Congress showed up to the new session with FTX baggage, having received campaign support from one of the senior executives of the fraud-ridden crypto giant.
    • CoinDesk has identified 196 members of the new Congress – many of whom were just sworn in last week – who took cash from Sam Bankman-Fried or other senior executives at FTX
  • 00:52:15 Blockstream Raises USD $125M to Expand Mining Operations [Press Release]
    • Leading Bitcoin infrastructure firm Blockstream has announced raising USD $125 million in convertible note and secured loan financing to expand its institutional bitcoin mining colocation services
    • With over 500 Megawatts in its development pipeline, Blockstream is one of the world’s largest bitcoin mining operators. Blockstream will also expand its renewable energy mining products, and continue developing its own bitcoin miner - the first institutional-grade bitcoin miner purpose-built to scale.
  • 00:52:29 Fold launches enterprise rewards API [API Wepage]
    • “We’re launching our enterprise rewards api at @fold_app to enable any bank, card or loyalty program to offer bitcoin rewards— a $100B+ market.”[@wlrvs] to enable any bank, card or loyalty program to offer bitcoin rewards— a $100B+ market
  • 00:53:05 Lightning is live with Clover. [Jack Mallers Twitter]
    • Strike is officially an integrated partner of the payments giant @Fiserv and have’ve launched a public pilot with @CloverCommerce point-of-sale terminals.
    • Clover merchants can now accept cheaper, faster, cash-final USD over LN.
    • 90-day pilot period initiated. Over the next 90 days settlement speed + cost will be measured compared to other networks and track new business Lightning brings to merchants that enable it.
    • After the pilot, Strike will launch in the Clover App Store and look to integrate into Clover directly, enabling LN as an accepted payment network for all Clover merchants by default, sitting next to card networks like Visa and MasterCard.
    • Any Clover merchant can enable payments over Lightning today.
    • If you want to enable cheaper, faster, cash-final payments over LN with @CloverCommerce, email partners@strike.me
  • 00:53:50 Bitcoin-based app Strike expands in Philippines to grow cross-border payment solutions [Techcrunch]
    • Strike, a Bitcoin-based payment network and financial app, is expanding to the Philippines to grow cross-border payments and remittance markets.
    • “The Philippines is one of the biggest remitting markets in the world, especially from the United States” ~ Jack Mallers
    • Aside from the Philippines, Strike plans on expanding further in the Latin American and African regions as well due to the “extreme amount of demand,” Mallers shared.
  • 00:56:13 BTC Pay Server Vulnerability disclosure affecting BTCPay Server V1.3.0 through V1.5.3 [BTC Pay Server Blog]
    • A remote attacker can obtain sensitive information when a Point of Sale app ( BTCPay Server component) is publicly exposed.
    • If an external node was used, xpub (public key) and lightning credentials were possibly leaked. If you used an internal node, only xpub could have been possibly leaked.
    • On May 28, 2022 Antoine Poinsot responsibly disclosed the vulnerability
    • On the same day BTC Pay Server released v1.5.4 that included a patch for said vulnerability.
    • Antoine awarded 5000 USD reward due to the severity of the vulnerability. Due to the severity of this vulnerability, it’s the highest paid bounty so far.
  • 00:57:11 Introducing Watch Swaps [lightningnetwork.plus]
    • A service similar to the Liquidity Swaps, but instead of opening channels to each other, node operators will watch each other’s nodes with their watchtower services to protect against malicious channel force closure attacks, and the resulting potential loss of funds.
  • 00:58:03 Ordinals Data [Bitmex]
    • Up until 7 February 2023, Bitmex have identified over 13,000 of these transactions, which take up 526MB of Bitcoin blockspace.
    • The total spend of these transactions is 6.77 BTC.
  • 00:58:41 Breez temporarily removed from app store due to crashes after latest update
    • It seems this issue only affects users w/o a backup, so it’s VERY important you don’t uninstall Breez so you will be able to recover your funds. We’ve temporarily removed Breez from the App Store and are working to get the issue fixed ASAP. [@Breez]
  • 00:59:16 Dubai Prohibits Privacy Coins Like Monero Under New Crypto Rules [Coindesk]
    • The issuance of anonymity-enhancing crypto are banned under the Emirate’s new regulations for digital assets.
    • The new rules define anonymity-enhancing crypto as “a type of Virtual Asset which prevents the tracing of transactions or record of ownership through distributed public ledgers and for which the [Virtual Asset Service Provider] has no mitigating technologies or mechanisms to allow traceability or identification of ownership.”
    • Crypto activities in Dubai are supervised by its Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), set up last year. The emirate has been working to attract attract crypto and blockchain companies to set up shop in Dubai.
  • 00:59:29 Berlin and Nigeria Lightning Conferences Cancelled [Source: @callebtc]
  • 00:59:39 Nostrica Announced [Costa Rica, March 19-21]
  • 01:00:41 The Power of Lightning Summit 2023
  • 01:01:36 Laanwj: Of regrets
  • 01:04:13 Opensats

Shoutouts

  • 01:07:26 Lake District BTC is organising a Bitcoin meet up where they climb England’s highest peak and essentially hold the highest meet up to date. They plan on holding 2-4 of these types of events throughout the year, where the meet up is based solely around an outdoor activity. Check out the Twitter page @LakeDistrictBTC for event details.

Audience Questions

  • 01:07:51 “Can NVK and guests speak about the security between 12- and 24-word seeds, and also Trezor’s security since they are the ones generating most of the 12-word seeds on/for hardware wallets. Of course, most software wallets also generate 12-word seeds. If 12-word seeds are good enough, would the CC consider generating them too, and can we still SeedXor 12-word seeds? In an extreme case where we need to temporarily memorize a list of words, 12 is much easier. Really enjoying the podcast! Thank you, gillian.”

Episode submission ideas

  • We’re looking for ideas for interesting panel conversations. To send Bitcoin related questions, just go to bitcoin.review and follow the contact links at the bottom of the page.

Get in touch with the pod

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