Nostr notes by schmidty

Today we’re publishing Brink's 2025 Engineering Impact ...

2026-03-26T09:42:10Z

Today we’re publishing Brink's 2025 Engineering Impact Report covering the work of the eight Bitcoin Core engineers we funded last year and why we think this work is important.

https://brink.dev/blog/2026/03/26/engineering-impact-report-2025/

We highlight the broader categories of work that Brink engineers performed in 2025 including:

* Code Review
* Testing and Bug Fixes
* Fuzzamoto
* The First Independent Security Audit of Bitcoin Core
* Release Management
* Build System
* Libsecp256k1
* Bitcoin Kernel
* Building on Bitcoin's Existing Capabilities

We’ve included a selection of highlighted contributions for each engineer we fund:

* Marco De Leon
* Sebastian Falbesoner
* Michael Ford
* Niklas Gögge
* Fabian Jahr
* Eugene Siegel
* Hennadii Stepanov
* Stéphan Vuylsteke

The full report includes more details on the projects, PRs, and accomplishments of each Brink engineer in 2025 and why we think this work is important and impactful to Bitcoin.

https://brink.dev/assets/files/brink-engineering-report-2025.pdf

For those wanting an even deeper look, we have compiled companion reports for each engineer:

* A markdown file explaining all authored PRs
* A CSV containing each authored PR
* A CSV linking to each PR reviewed

None of this work would be possible without the generosity of Bitcoiners who share our mission of strengthening Bitcoin by ensuring that Bitcoin's codebase continues to be maintained, tested, reviewed, and improved in a “Move slow, fix things” fashion. Thank you.

Nostr event nevent1qqsdk23az84dtxkn3jus2s9w25rqc0vz87rvfdgtkve00xgef06d27szyq2rn2759xq3vh4vengyd02kt2k3nu33f2f6mx7sntvruv6zhmye7gh39sa

2026-02-25T20:14:50Z

Fuzzamoto is a fuzz testing tool for Bitcoin full nodes. For the ...

2026-01-07T15:39:47Z

Fuzzamoto is a fuzz testing tool for Bitcoin full nodes. For the last year, Niklas Gögge (dergoegge (npub1m78…7h66)) has been building Fuzzamoto with the goal of:

“an external testing suite that gets as close as possible to taking production binaries as input and producing bugs as output”

Part 1 of Brink’s blog series on Fuzzamoto provides an introduction of Fuzzamoto including its motivation, a design overview, and the first bugs found.
https://brink.dev/blog/2026/01/07/fuzzamoto-introduction/

See our previous discussion with Niklas for further background on fuzz testing:
https://brink.dev/blog/2023/07/14/fuzzing/

Running in pruned mode

2025-12-24T18:19:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…4k3f
_________________________

Running in pruned mode

Its that time of the year again Bitcoin Optech's 2025 ...

2025-12-19T15:41:20Z

Its that time of the year again

Bitcoin Optech's 2025 Year-in-Review

quoting
note158q…tzm3
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
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/19/

In 2025, Optech summarized more than a dozen vulnerability disclosures...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/19/#vulns

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.
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/19/#quantum

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…
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/19/#softforks

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....
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/19/#stratumv2

Optech covered major releases of popular infrastructure projects throughout the year...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/19/#releases

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
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/19/#optech

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!
https://riverside.fm/studio/bitcoin-optech

Congrats Max and team!

2025-12-17T19:54:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…wwwu
_________________________

Congrats Max and team!

Murch and I cover a lot of Bitcoin technical developments on the ...

2025-12-10T15:33:19Z

Murch and I cover a lot of Bitcoin technical developments on the
Bitcoin Optech podcast each week.

But there is a lot going on in Bitcoin that we don’t cover.

What are you curious about? Drop a question below and join us for a Twitter/X Space tomorrow and we will get to as many as we can.

https://x.com/i/spaces/1OwxWeWXMoVGQ

Got it. I personally don’t have any time to allocate for that. ...

2025-11-29T15:11:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…zpuu
_________________________

Got it. I personally don’t have any time to allocate for that. But I’d be happy to chat with a group that gets established for this if it would help

What did you have in mind?

2025-11-28T17:06:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…j99x
_________________________

What did you have in mind?

They did BSV ...

2025-11-19T16:08:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…rslq
_________________________

They did BSV https://github.com/trailofbits/publications?tab=readme-ov-file#bitcoin--derivatives

As part of Brink's mission to ensure the safety and ...

2025-11-19T14:14:47Z

As part of Brink's mission to ensure the safety and robustness of the open-source Bitcoin Core software, we recently sponsored an independent security audit of the Bitcoin Core codebase.

This represents the first public, third-party audit of Bitcoin Core.
https://brink.dev/blog/2025/11/19/bitcoin-core-security-audit/

The assessment was conducted by Quarkslab and was coordinated with the help of the Open Source Technology Improvement Fund (OSTIF). Funding was provided by Brink with the support of our donors, with technical collaboration from Brink engineer, Niklas Gögge, and Chaincode Labs engineer, Antoine Poinsot.

Why Brink funded this work

The project has a strong security track record, but it has never undergone an external security assessment. We wanted to provide an additional layer of assurance for developers, node operators, holders, and businesses who rely on Bitcoin Core every day

What the audit involved

The focus was on the most security-critical components of the software, including the peer-to-peer networking layer, mempool, chain management, and consensus logic and included:
- Manual code review
- Static and dynamic analysis
- Advanced fuzz testing

What the auditors found

The auditors at Quarkslab reported no critical, high, or medium-severity issues. They identified two low-severity findings and thirteen informational recommendations, none of which were classified as security vulnerabilities under Bitcoin Core’s criteria.

Funding independent reviews like this is just one way we help ensure Bitcoin doesn’t break and continues to serve the world as a secure, reliable monetary network.

Independent review only strengthens that confidence.

Thank you to Quarkslab, the OSTIF, Niklas, and Antoine for their work on this project.

The full report is publicly available here:
https://ostif.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/25-05-2133-REP-bitcoincore-security-assessment-V1.3.pdf

Meanwhile… The decade-long engineering efforts toward ...

2025-11-07T18:52:01Z

Meanwhile…

The decade-long engineering efforts toward libsecp256k1, a minimal from scratch Bitcoin-specific library, result in an 800% speed up over OpenSSL while also:

- removing a problematic dependency
- avoiding side channel attacks
- being fully deterministic

Sebastian Falbesoner via
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/11/07/#comparing-performance-of-ecdsa-signature-validation-in-openssl-vs-libsecp256k1

Nostr event nevent1qqsx3vm4x6awk57zkt3apzxwswydzz4qetl50z4lu6c8mn0ucms9zwszyq2rn2759xq3vh4vengyd02kt2k3nu33f2f6mx7sntvruv6zhmye7anu2fk

2025-11-06T13:51:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…fp8s
_________________________

“Where is the public roadmap for Bitcoin Core?” This ...

2025-11-05T17:11:59Z

“Where is the public roadmap for Bitcoin Core?”

This sentiment from Zach is common and Ill give my own thoughts on it
https://x.com/zachherbert/status/1976726178376696016

The subprojects that individual Bitcoin Core engineers contribute to reflect the project’s *software development priorities* which can include things like testing improvements, refactors, features, maintenance, or performance improvements.

These software engineering efforts are distinct from the Bitcoin *protocol*, whose consensus rules change only through broad community agreement and network adoption, not by decisions made exclusively within the Bitcoin Core repository.

If I were looking to derive a shorter term “public roadmap for Bitcoin Core” (again, the Bitcoin Core software, not Bitcoin protocol), there are a few places to look.

**Working Groups**

Contributors actively working on similar efforts form working groups to implement and review projects in Bitcoin Core. A list of the current working groups is on the Bitcoin Core Wiki:
https://github.com/bitcoin-core/bitcoin-devwiki/wiki/Working-Groups#current-working-groups

From here we can see interest in: Erlay, Fuzzing, Kernel, Benchmarking, Silent Payments, Cluster Mempool, Stratum v2, Multiprocess, QML GUI, and Net Split

These working groups also provide updates at the weekly Bitcoin Core developer meetings on IRC: https://bitcoincore.org/en/meetings/ This is another place to see current work.

**Tracking issues**

Many subprojects within Bitcoin Core have a place to track a todo list of code changes that roll up into that project.

Here are just a few examples (search the GitHub for “tracking issue” for more):

Multiprocess - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/28722
Mining interface - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/33777
MuSig2 - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/31246
Cluster mempool - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/30289
Erlay - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/30249
Bitcoin Kernel Library - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/27587
SENDTEMPLATE - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/33691

**Core Dev meetups**

What developers discuss at recent in-person meetings is another data point. Here are transcripts from the
October 2025 meeting - https://btctranscripts.com/bitcoin-core-dev-tech/2025-10
February 2025 meeting - https://btctranscripts.com/bitcoin-core-dev-tech/2025-02

**Merged PRs**

As code changes are merged into the Bitcoin Core GitHub before the next release you can see precisely what will be in the upcoming release. These code changes include PRs related to projects above, but also more general changes unrelated to a particular project, like maintenance work, additional testing, one-off features, etc.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Amerged

Likewise Optech has a weekly notable code segment that picks interesting code merges to cover: https://bitcoinops.org/

**Release Milestones**

As Bitcoin Core progresses toward a new release, PRs can be tagged with a milestone representing that release.

For example, here are the items tagged for the previous v30 release:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls?q=is%3Apr+milestone%3A30.0

And here are considerations for the v31 release: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls?q=is%3Apr+milestone%3A31.0

**TLDR, just tell me what will be in v31**

Sorry, there isn’t a definitive authoritative answer for a decentralized open source project like this. But also in the spirit of decentralization, I can provide my own guesses of what might be in there.

Kernel API - modular use of Bitcoin’s consensus and validation logic outside the full node

MuSig2 (in wallet) - fee-efficient, privacy-preserving multi-signature support

Cluster mempool - makes transaction relay and block assembly more efficient, predictable, and network reliability.

ASMap - help diversify peer connections, strengthening network resilience against eclipse attacks

Static builds - reproducible, portable binaries that enhance security, verifiability, and ease of deployment

I’ll emphasize that while these projects took a ton of work to get where they are, there will also be a majority of PRs in v31 that will not be part of a “project”. They will simply be general improvements, bug fixes, and maintenance work (see https://x.com/bitschmidty/status/1976692672023667057 for examples)

Last week many Bitcoin Core developers met up in Frankfurt, ...

2025-10-31T17:50:51Z

Last week many Bitcoin Core developers met up in Frankfurt, Germany as part of their regular twice-yearly in person meetings.

Attendees volunteered to take notes on the unconference-style sessions and I have a pull request to add the notes to the BTC transcripts website:

- ASMap
- Batch Validation
- Secp256k1 and quantum
- CISA
- Cluster mempool
- CMake
- CoreCheck
- Debugging
- Fuzzamoto
- Libsha
- Multiprocess and Mining Interface
- Fingerprinting
- Net / net_processing split
- Package relay
- Private broadcast
- Security audit
- Subject matter experts and working groups
- Sockets abstraction

Additional informal discussions, code reviews, working groups, or other sessions occurred on:

- BIP 3
- Wallet priorities
- Compact Block prefills
- Silent Payments
- btck
- CI
- SwiftSync
- Benchmarking and IBD
- When do Bitcoin Core users upgrade?
- MuSig2
- Kernel
- Working in-person
- Complications with fuzz testing
- BlockTemplateManager
- QML GUI
- Shared Templates BIP
- Headers-first sync
- Batch Validation
- FIBRE
- Consensus Cleanup
- Silent payments libsecp256k1 light client
- Better communicating with the broad community
- Discussion on block 920138 and Bitcoin Core #33687
- Mempool and relay policy
- CI with CTest and CDash

This meeting was sponsored by BTrust who provided the funding for the venue, food, supplies, etc to facilitate the meeting (thank you!).

JD (from localhost research), Emily (from Brink) and myself organized.

A list of previous meetings is here: https://coredev.tech

The PR to the http://btctranscripts.com website is open here, pending approval:
https://github.com/bitcointranscripts/bitcointranscripts/pull/593

Bitcoin Core v30: a deeper look Link to the tweet ...

2025-10-10T17:48:00Z

Bitcoin Core v30: a deeper look

Link to the tweet
https://x.com/bitschmidty/status/1976692672023667057

Non Twitter link
https://twitter-thread.com/t/1976692672023667057

Yeah that title was a bit dramatic based on the content we ...

2025-10-07T23:04:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…rj5w
_________________________

Yeah that title was a bit dramatic based on the content we actually covered

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BCTVfxxBlc

2025-09-27T13:55:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…muce
_________________________

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BCTVfxxBlc

I know there is work on differential fuzzing for Bitcoin node ...

2025-09-26T12:10:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…9ywv
_________________________

I know there is work on differential fuzzing for Bitcoin node implementations to surface incompatibilities. Same for Lightning I think. I dont know about SRI/SV2 work in this regard.

A literal phd in fuzzing. Pretty incredible.

2025-09-26T11:32:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…jquq
_________________________

A literal phd in fuzzing. Pretty incredible.

Fuzz testing and Bitcoin Core... We received a pretty ...

2025-09-26T10:59:18Z

Fuzz testing and Bitcoin Core...

We received a pretty overwhelming response to our recent job post for a Bitcoin Core Fuzzing Internship at Brink.

Brink received over 70 applications for the role with many qualified candidates.

After the results of a coding challenge, we decided to actually move forward with two engineers for the 3 month role.

Dongjia Zhang is a Ph.D. fuzzing researcher and maintainer of the LibAFL fuzzing library used to fuzz test Bitcoin Core.

Stratos has a background in vulnerability research and will join Dongjia in working with Niklas (@dergoegge) in the coming months to enhance the fuzz testing capabilities in Bitcoin Core.

Fuzz testing is the idea of throwing a bunch of quasi-random inputs at various functions of a codebase and seeing if anything abnormal happens. Think of it like mining for bugs.

There is work in both the Bitcoin Core codebase as well as fuzz tooling (like fuzzamoto) in order to test more and more of Bitcoin Core in this way.

Here is a bit more about fuzz testing in Bitcoin Core: https://brink.dev/blog/2023/07/14/fuzzing/

Here is a conversation we had with Matt Morehouse on fuzz testing the Lightning Network:
https://brink.dev/blog/2024/06/25/eng-call-fuzz-testing-lightning/

Marco (@macrohead7) recently completed his year long onsite fuzzing fellowship at Brink and provided some thoughts as well: https://brink.dev/blog/2025/07/31/marco-fuzzing-fellowship/

Brink is proud to support the build out of further fuzzing capabilities in the Bitcoin Core codebase as well as other ecosystem softwares. We have not had intern roles before either and are excited to see how it works out.

Welcome Dongjia and Stratos!

A real example and opportunity of non-development contributions. ...

2025-09-25T13:56:44Z

A real example and opportunity of non-development contributions.

Jan B just created a testing guide for the Bitcoin Core v30 release. It outlines the updates in the release as well instructions for testing each.

Testing is an important aspect of software development that anyone can participate in.

The Bitcoin Core v30.0 Release Candidate Testing Guide:
https://github.com/bitcoin-core/bitcoin-devwiki/wiki/30.0-Release-Candidate-Testing-Guide/

quoting
nevent1q…yx0n
The topic of non-developer contributions to Bitcoin and Bitcoin Core came up in a thread the other day. So I wanted to elevate this list, in case people are interested.

Ways to contribute other than code:

Education / Outreach
Optech
Conferences
Saving Satoshi
Fundraising
Bitdevs

User feedback
Reproducing issues
Priorities?

Security
Dependency auditing
CVE disclosure
Mailing list
Pen testing

Dev Tooling
CI
Signet
Fuzzing
Drahtbot
Corecheck,dev
Bitcoin dev wiki

Mentoring
Developer hubs
Review clubs

Release Process
Testing guide
Building binaries
Signing binaries
translations
Packaging for distro

Monitoring
b10c stuff etc

Standardization
BIPs
Bolts etc

Events
Coredev
Online communication channels
Mailing list
Delving
IRC
Twitter / etc
Stack exchange
http://bitcoincore.org
Backups of stuff

Dev Infrastructure
Fuzzing
Devops stuff
Dns seeds

User feedback
Outward
Talk to miners? Exchanges? Surveys

Research
BRW

Janitor work
Reproducing

Other items listed:
Coredev
conference
BIPs (review, reading)
Stack exchange
CI
Fuzzer machines
Devops
Monitoring
http://bitcoincore.org maintaining/hosting
Signet / inquisition
Utilities for interacting with Bitcoin (Core)
Educational stuff like saving satoshi
Delving
Mailing list
Backup of delving/mailing list/github comments
IRC and logs
Drahtbot / meetingbot
Bitcoinacks (?)
Fundraising
Developer hubs
Review clubs
Technical talks / podcasts / outreach
Bitdevs
Deterministic builds (running)
Dns seed
Dependency auditing/pruning
Architecture CI doesn’t account for
Reproducing issues
Moderation of github
Research Week
Twitter threads
Translations
Security
Security mailing list
CVE management / disclosure etc
Pen testing
http://Corecheck.dev
Core dev wiki
Bitcoin wiki
Summaries of communal knowledge
Optech
Release packaging for distros
Janitoring old issues/PRs
BOSS program
Summer of Bitcoin

Original: https://btctranscripts.com/bitcoin-core-dev-tech/2025-02/non-development-contributions

Nice. Did you happen to use the testing guide? ...

2025-09-25T11:42:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…k0sr
_________________________

Nice. Did you happen to use the testing guide?

https://github.com/bitcoin-core/bitcoin-devwiki/wiki/30.0-Release-Candidate-Testing-Guide/

https://bitcoin.design/

2025-09-24T19:23:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…4z8p
_________________________

https://bitcoin.design/

This was pointed out on Twitter as well. It’s true.

2025-09-24T19:12:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…ar8m
_________________________

This was pointed out on Twitter as well. It’s true.

The topic of non-developer contributions to Bitcoin and Bitcoin ...

2025-09-24T14:08:22Z

The topic of non-developer contributions to Bitcoin and Bitcoin Core came up in a thread the other day. So I wanted to elevate this list, in case people are interested.

Ways to contribute other than code:

Education / Outreach
Optech
Conferences
Saving Satoshi
Fundraising
Bitdevs

User feedback
Reproducing issues
Priorities?

Security
Dependency auditing
CVE disclosure
Mailing list
Pen testing

Dev Tooling
CI
Signet
Fuzzing
Drahtbot
Corecheck,dev
Bitcoin dev wiki

Mentoring
Developer hubs
Review clubs

Release Process
Testing guide
Building binaries
Signing binaries
translations
Packaging for distro

Monitoring
b10c stuff etc

Standardization
BIPs
Bolts etc

Events
Coredev
Online communication channels
Mailing list
Delving
IRC
Twitter / etc
Stack exchange
http://bitcoincore.org
Backups of stuff

Dev Infrastructure
Fuzzing
Devops stuff
Dns seeds

User feedback
Outward
Talk to miners? Exchanges? Surveys

Research
BRW

Janitor work
Reproducing

Other items listed:
Coredev
conference
BIPs (review, reading)
Stack exchange
CI
Fuzzer machines
Devops
Monitoring
http://bitcoincore.org maintaining/hosting
Signet / inquisition
Utilities for interacting with Bitcoin (Core)
Educational stuff like saving satoshi
Delving
Mailing list
Backup of delving/mailing list/github comments
IRC and logs
Drahtbot / meetingbot
Bitcoinacks (?)
Fundraising
Developer hubs
Review clubs
Technical talks / podcasts / outreach
Bitdevs
Deterministic builds (running)
Dns seed
Dependency auditing/pruning
Architecture CI doesn’t account for
Reproducing issues
Moderation of github
Research Week
Twitter threads
Translations
Security
Security mailing list
CVE management / disclosure etc
Pen testing
http://Corecheck.dev
Core dev wiki
Bitcoin wiki
Summaries of communal knowledge
Optech
Release packaging for distros
Janitoring old issues/PRs
BOSS program
Summer of Bitcoin

Original: https://btctranscripts.com/bitcoin-core-dev-tech/2025-02/non-development-contributions

I’m saying people like myself “throw out” (use) the term ...

2025-09-20T11:46:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…0jqq
_________________________

I’m saying people like myself “throw out” (use) the term “maintenance” but we rarely discuss what it actually encompasses.

Gloria has been at Chaincode for about 6 months.

This post is about minimizing dependencies

2025-09-20T11:37:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…kkyf
_________________________

This post is about minimizing dependencies

This post isn’t about op_return And we don’t fund Gloria

2025-09-20T11:36:18Z

In reply to nevent1q…f0jj
_________________________

This post isn’t about op_return

And we don’t fund Gloria

The English parts were mine. The “cctools-port, libtapi, and ...

2025-09-19T15:30:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…6ed9
_________________________

The English parts were mine. The “cctools-port, libtapi, and ld64 to llvm binutils and lld” parts were you know who

Many people, myself included, tout the importance of software ...

2025-09-19T15:23:16Z

Many people, myself included, tout the importance of software maintenance in the context of Bitcoin Core. It is easy to throw out "maintenance!" and most people will nod their head in agreement, but I think its helpful to have some examples to understand the depth of this work and risks of not doing it.

There are many categories of maintenance work, today I am just going to zoom in on one: minimizing dependencies.

Recently someone attempted to put in a backdoor into XZ, a library used by softwares in hundreds of millions of computers around the world. Even a couple weeks ago hackers slipped malicious code into dozens of NPM packages that receive millions of downloads each week.

Bitcoin Core and other Bitcoin software are not immune to these kinds of attacks. While Bitcoin Core has a robust culture of code review and testing, Bitcoin Core uses third-party libraries as well. Code from these libraries is run, in addition to Bitcoin Core's code, when you are running your node.

Any bug, vulnerability, or performance issue in these libraries (dependencies) can cause issues for Bitcoin Core. Updates to these dependencies of Bitcoin Core are a potential risk and need to be regularly tracked and reviewed. From a security perspective, these dependencies should also be minimized and eliminated where possible.

Bitcoin Core developers have spent years minimizing the number of dependencies of the project. In some cases replacing them with minimal, in-house alternatives that achieve the same function in order to reduce attack surface.

In this latest Brink blog, we outline the risks of using dependencies as well as several examples of Bitcoin Core removing problematic or unnecessary dependencies of the project.

https://brink.dev/blog/2025/09/19/minimizing-dependencies/

Apologies for this being late. We ran into technical troubles ...

2025-09-08T21:29:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…gt8r
_________________________

Apologies for this being late. We ran into technical troubles during the first recording attempt

Russell O’Connor joined Brink to explain his work on formal ...

2025-08-07T14:57:53Z

Russell O’Connor joined Brink to explain his work on formal verification of software, the process of mathematically proving that a program satisfies its specification.

- Overview of formal verification of software
- Walkthrough w/ libsecp256k1
- Coq, Rocq, Clightgen
- SafeGCD
- Q&A

https://brink.dev/blog/2025/08/07/eng-call-russell-oconnor-formal-verification/

Jameson Lopp and Tim Ruffing on quantum Steven Roose on the ...

2025-08-06T16:28:47Z

Jameson Lopp and Tim Ruffing on quantum

Steven Roose on the OP_TEMPLATEHASH soft fork bundle

David Gumberg on compact block prefilling

Lauren Shareshian from Block on mempool fee estimation

quoting
note1m07…7wma
David Gumberg, Lauren Shareshian, Jameson Lopp, Steven Roose, and Tim Ruffing joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #365:

- Compact block prefilling
- Mempool-based fee estimation
- Migration from quantum-vulnerable outputs
- The OP_TEMPLATEHASH proposal
- Proposal to allow longer relative timelocks
- Security against quantum computers with taproot as a commitment scheme
- And more

You can listen on our website:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2025/08/05/

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/65CJxx41a9UYQhCvHDrXWX

Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-optech-newsletter-365-recap/id1674626983?i=1000720913277

One year ago Marco De Leon embarked on a year long Brink ...

2025-07-31T14:11:40Z

One year ago Marco De Leon embarked on a year long Brink fellowship in our London office. Today, after a year of progress and contributions, we’re happy to bring him on as a full-time Bitcoin Core engineer!

"The idea of diving into a codebase as critical and complex as Bitcoin Core’s was intimidating, and frankly, I was a bit worried I didn’t have enough experience to contribute meaningfully. The fellowship provided the perfect bridge..."
https://brink.dev/blog/2025/07/31/marco-fuzzing-fellowship/

Marco, with guidance from his mentor Niklas Gögge, focused his fellowship on fuzz testing, a technique for catching subtle bugs and security vulnerabilities.
https://brink.dev/blog/2023/07/14/fuzzing/

His work took him from improving existing fuzz tests, to removing the longstanding mainnet checkpoints, to improving type safety in the Bitcoin Core codebase.

We are proud of Marco and Niklas for their efforts this past year. Bitcoin is more secure because of Marco's contributions and Bitcoin is stronger with another experienced engineer working on security into the future.

If you're interested in fuzzing and a career as an open source Bitcoin engineer, like Marco, we are pleased to offer, in addition to the fellowship, a new Bitcoin Core Fuzzing Internship at Brink

Join us and contribute to Bitcoin security through fuzzing!
https://bitcoinerjobs.com/job/1801236-bitcoin-core-fuzzing-internship

The CTV and CSFS open letter segment got a little spicy with some ...

2025-07-10T14:49:18Z

The CTV and CSFS open letter segment got a little spicy with some real talk

We really dug in on Tadge's commit/reveal scheme for quantum as well

quoting
note1qre…2kra
Sanket Kanjalkar, Jonas Nick, Tadge Dryja, Steven Roose, and Brandon Black joined Optech this week to discuss:

- A new onion message network
- CTV+CSFS and benefits to PTLCs and BitVM
- Vault descriptors
- The CTV and CSFS open letter
- Winternitz signatures using OP_CAT
- Commit/reveal function for post-quantum recovery
- OP_TXHASH variant with support for transaction sponsorship
- And more

https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2025/07/08/

Also, glozow has an extended checklist that builds on that ...

2025-06-17T13:38:18Z

In reply to nevent1q…0ks0
_________________________

Also, glozow has an extended checklist that builds on that release process:

https://github.com/glozow/bitcoin-notes/blob/master/release_checklist.md

What is Bitcoin Core's release process for managing release ...

2025-06-17T13:37:21Z

What is Bitcoin Core's release process for managing release candidates, minor releases, and major releases?

Bitcoin Core's Release Process doc:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/release-process.md

Eric Voskuil joined Bitcoin engineers to discuss architectural ...

2025-06-17T10:48:41Z

Eric Voskuil joined Bitcoin engineers to discuss architectural and performance differences between libbitcoin and Bitcoin Core:

- libbitcoin’s history/latest updates
- libbitcoin architecture
- Initial block download (IBD) performance
- IBD workflow
- SwiftSync
- Q&A

Watch the 90 minute discussion:

https://brink.dev/blog/2025/06/17/eng-call-eric-voskuil-utxo-model/

Bad bot

2025-06-12T21:10:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…lj4s
_________________________

Bad bot

Optech's "Changing Consensus" monthly segment always ...

2025-06-12T19:22:55Z

Optech's "Changing Consensus" monthly segment always makes for an interesting recap podcast

quoting
note1leu…l6p8
Jose SK, Clara Shikhelman, Vojtěch Strnad, Robin Linus, and Dan Gould joined Murch (nprofile…mzvs) and schmidty (nprofile…tz3n) to discuss:

- Syncing full nodes without witnesses
- Quantum computing report
- Transaction weight limit with exception to prevent confiscation
- Removing outputs from the UTXO set based on value and time
- And More…

Catch up:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2025/06/10/

I think Optech has done a great job of surfacing and summarizing ...

2025-05-15T12:00:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…96ud
_________________________

I think Optech has done a great job of surfacing and summarizing "RTFM"-type content from from the mailing list, github, delving, etc. But two points on that:

1. There are communications/informations that Optech wouldnt typically cover that could still be valuable for a wider audience. In the OP_RETURN skirmish example: information around moderation policies, who are the moderators, what is a "BAN", etc.

2. As Bitcoin grows, the Optech content becomes less accessible or even reachable for the "average" Bitcoiner and Optech summary content itself becomes "RTFM" in need of translation for a wider audience.

I agree with your thoughts, and am really just adding my $.02 on the "has been adequately disseminated" point.

What do you suggest?

2025-05-14T23:41:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…5hsl
_________________________

What do you suggest?

Anyone that can help amplify signal would be valuable!

2025-05-14T12:50:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…u0ps
_________________________

Anyone that can help amplify signal would be valuable!

I think communication helps focus the discussion on the actual ...

2025-05-14T12:48:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…syxr
_________________________

I think communication helps focus the discussion on the actual disagreements so deeper and better debate can happen, whatever the result.

There is a lot going on in the OP_RETURN debate, but I definitely ...

2025-05-14T12:31:39Z

There is a lot going on in the OP_RETURN debate, but I definitely agree with this:

"What the OP_RETURN debate has demonstrated is that Bitcoin Core and the Bitcoin technical community have not done a good job communicating their value – not to mention the rationale behind their decisions – to the average bitcoin user."
https://blockspace.media/insight/op_return-debate-the-influencers-vs-the-devs/

The Bitcoin Core developers have produced artifacts and content on these matters already, but those of us closely observing need to do a better job of disseminating that information to a broader set of Bitcoin ecosystem participants.

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."

I need to do better.

@nprofile…d0r5 and @nprofile…t75r will be on the Optech ...

2025-05-03T13:10:43Z

Murch (nprofile…d0r5) and nprofile1qyxhwumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmvqyv8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnnwpex7an0daehgtnwdsqzpp59a0hkv5ecm45nrckvmu7pnk0sukssvly33u3wwzquy4v037hcsgt75r (nprofile…t75r) will be on the Optech podcast this Tuesday, covering the OP_RETURN discussions among other topics

16:30 UTC Tuesday this week

quoting
nevent1q…urtz
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #352 is here:

- links to comparisons between different cluster linearization techniques
- briefly summarizes discussion about increasing or removing Bitcoin Core’s OP_RETURN size limit
- Optech Newsletter #352 Recap
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/05/02/

Pieter Wuille posted to Delving Bitcoin about some of the fundamental tradeoffs between three different cluster linearization techniques, following up with benchmarks of implementations of each...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/05/02/#comparison-of-cluster-linearization-techniques

In a thread on Bitcoin-Dev, several developers discussed changing or removing Bitcoin Core’s default limit for OP_RETURN data carrier outputs. A subsequent Bitcoin Core pull request saw additional discussion...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/05/02/#increasing-or-removing-bitcoin-core-s-op-return-size-limit

Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 16:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
https://riverside.fm/studio/bitcoin-optech

Nostr event nevent1qqs2xdyk5yez3h5luzzk83ue7jyhukvggt0asuypkluu6zn5ssg5k5szyq2rn2759xq3vh4vengyd02kt2k3nu33f2f6mx7sntvruv6zhmye7phpwwj

2025-04-09T12:19:37Z

Is there a way to stream video via RTMP to nostr?

😬

2025-04-08T20:49:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…9wyj
_________________________

😬

(if/when quantum computers become powerful enough to allow ...

2025-04-08T20:45:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…l20g
_________________________

(if/when quantum computers become powerful enough to allow stealing bitcoins):

Pieter suggests the bitcoins that are still vulnerable are confiscated/locked/destroyed/made unspendable.

Parker suggests allowing the vulnerable bitcoins to be stolen.

Which way, quantum Bitcoiner? https://m.primal.net/QIlo.png

2025-04-08T17:05:03Z

Which way, quantum Bitcoiner?

stay humble and stack theStack ...

2025-04-07T13:49:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…e4dk
_________________________

stay humble and stack theStack

https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqsx4kc9cfys76te8peq9v6xrxdqdcj4kswaxz79qu23gdh30zafp8cr54lhd

After years of contributing to Bitcoin on nights and weekends, ...

2025-04-07T13:48:10Z

After years of contributing to Bitcoin on nights and weekends, Sebastian Falbesoner has left his job to focus 100% of his time on Bitcoin open source development.

"After years of contributing part-time, I'm thrilled to fully commit myself to improving the Bitcoin ecosystem. A big thanks to Brink for providing the ideal environment to make this dream a reality! 🫡 " - Sebastian

Brink is proud to enable Sebastian's move to full time, but the credit goes to our supporters.

Thank you Samara Asset Group, Lightspark, Stakwork, Ledger, Bitwise, VanEck, and Jack Dorsey whose multi-year pledges show engineers that open source development can be a sustainable career!

Unchained did a write up about this structure which might help ...

2025-04-04T18:43:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…2tth
_________________________

Unchained did a write up about this structure which might help

https://www.unchained.com/donor-advised-funds

Brink just received our first donation from a Bitcoin ...

2025-04-04T17:11:38Z

Brink just received our first donation from a Bitcoin Donor-Advised Fund.

The donation was in BTC and made using a multisig onchain transaction.

This donation was made through Unchained's Bitcoin DAF and will be held in our reserves to fund Bitcoin development into the future.

🚀

Get cozy, its a long #Bitcoin Optech newsletter this week ...

2025-04-04T16:19:09Z

Get cozy, its a long #Bitcoin Optech newsletter this week

quoting
nevent1q…mrg9
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #348 is here:

- links to an educational implementation of elliptic curve cryptography for Bitcoin’s secp256k1 curve
- Changing consensus covering: discussions about quantum computer theft and resistance, a CTV+CSFS soft fork, OP_CHECKCONTRACTVERIFY semantics, and a consensus cleanup draft BIP
- Optech Newsletter #348 Recap on Riverside
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/04/04/

Sebastian Falbesoner, Jonas Nick, and Tim Ruffing posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list to announce a Python implementation of various functions related to the cryptography used in Bitcoin...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/04/04/#educational-and-experimental-based-secp256k1-implementation

Several conversations examined how Bitcoiners could respond to quantum computers becoming powerful enough to allow stealing bitcoins...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/04/04/#multiple-discussions-about-quantum-computer-theft-and-resistance

Several conversations examined various aspects of soft forking in the OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV) and OP_CHECKSIGFROMSTACK (CSFS) opcodes...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/04/04/#multiple-discussions-about-a-ctv-csfs-soft-fork

Salvatore Ingala posted to Delving Bitcoin to describe the semantics of the proposed OP_CHECKCONTRACTVERIFY (CCV) opcode, link to a first draft BIP, and link to an implementation draft for Bitcoin Core...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/04/04/#op-checkcontractverify-semantics

Antoine Poinsot posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a link to a draft BIP he’s written for the consensus cleanup soft fork proposal. It includes several fixes...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/04/04/#draft-bip-published-for-consensus-cleanup

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!
https://riverside.fm/studio/bitcoin-optech

Brink is excited to announce that Eugene Siegel has joined us as ...

2025-04-02T15:51:21Z

Brink is excited to announce that Eugene Siegel has joined us as an open source engineer working on fuzz testing and Bitcoin Core development!

With a background as a security engineer working on Lightning and already disclosing multiple Bitcoin Core security vulnerabilities, we're excited for Eugene to help ensure the long-term security, resilience & decentralization of Bitcoin.

Welcome Eugene!

https://brink.dev/blog/2025/04/01/eugene/

Today we celebrate Hennadii Stepanov's 4 year anniversary as ...

2025-03-28T19:39:07Z

Today we celebrate Hennadii Stepanov's 4 year anniversary as a Bitcoin Core engineer at Brink 🎉

From a simple fixup because of an old laptop, to one of the most prolific contributors to Bitcoin Core today...
https://brink.dev/blog/2025/03/28/hebastos-brink-epoch/

Whether that is the build system, operating system compatibility, the GUI, or language translations, hebasto’s efforts have been aimed at making Bitcoin secure, accessible, and user-friendly.

Hebasto led a project to migrate the build system to a modern, CMake-based one, enhancing efficiency and paving the way for future development. The migration to CMake took nearly 300 pull requests, a dozen people, and two years of review and testing.
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/09/06/#bitcoin-core-30454

Since his initial contribution, hebasto has 1800+ (!) commits to his name.

But it isn't just his own work...in the last year alone hebasto also provided nearly 1,700 review comments.
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors

Brink and the Bitcoin community are lucky to have hebasto on our team.

Thank you for your open source #Bitcoin contributions, Hennadii 🚀

Moisturized. Unbothered. In his lane. Flourishing. ...

2025-03-27T18:07:24Z

Moisturized. Unbothered. In his lane. Flourishing.

Marco does a good job explaining the context of checkpoints and ...

2025-03-26T17:47:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…m8l2
_________________________

Marco does a good job explaining the context of checkpoints and their relation to things like assumevalid. Checkout from this timestamp:

https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2025/03/25/#bitcoin-core-31649

Consensus Cleanup soft fork BIP draft dropped ...

2025-03-26T17:38:18Z

Consensus Cleanup soft fork BIP draft dropped

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/1800

What is coming in Bitcoin Core 29.0? Demand Pool is deploying ...

2025-03-26T15:33:41Z

What is coming in Bitcoin Core 29.0?

Demand Pool is deploying Cluster Mempool to production soon?

What happens with no checkpoints in Bitcoin Core?

quoting note169c…q278
Yesterday Murch (nprofile…d0r5) and schmidty (nprofile…tz3n) were joined by Matt Morehouse, Yong Yu, Alejandro De La Torre, Jan B, and Marco De Leon to discuss Newsletter #346:

- LND's dynamic feerate adjustment system
- DMND launching pooled mining
- Bitcoin Core 29.0rc2 and testing guide
- Removing checkpoints in Bitcoin Core
- And more!

Catch up:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2025/03/25/

Cc: @fountain_app

2025-03-24T15:30:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…ze8z
_________________________

Cc: @fountain_app

Podcast platforms used by Bitcoin Optech listeners. Pretty ...

2025-03-24T15:29:48Z

Podcast platforms used by Bitcoin Optech listeners. Pretty unusual stats, I'd think

Onion though?

2025-03-03T22:25:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…943u
_________________________

Onion though?

Making the Presidio Bitcoin Pilgrimage this week. Come say hi if ...

2025-03-03T17:05:07Z

Making the Presidio Bitcoin Pilgrimage this week.

Come say hi if you're there on Thursday or for SF Bitdevs!

Simanta Gautam joined Brink engineers to discuss SNARKS, ZK ...

2025-02-24T17:25:22Z

Simanta Gautam joined Brink engineers to discuss SNARKS, ZK Rollups & BitVM2 in a Bitcoin context:

- Verifiable compute w/SNARKS
- 2-way pegs, bridges, BitVM, trust minimization
- Bitcoin's state machine
- Sovereign ZK rollups
- Use cases

https://brink.dev/blog/2025/02/23/eng-call-alpen-zkrollups/

Brink is happy to announce a $50,000 contribution to our open ...

2025-02-21T12:40:09Z

Brink is happy to announce a $50,000 contribution to our open source Bitcoin development efforts from VanEck!

Thank you to VanEck for supporting open source 🧡

It’s a good mad

2025-02-20T00:09:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…m5jv
_________________________

It’s a good mad

“What’s Matt mad at now” is brilliant. Look forward to more ...

2025-02-19T21:24:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…hvzu
_________________________

“What’s Matt mad at now” is brilliant. Look forward to more in this series

Yeah I got a new mic but the office echo still seems to overpower ...

2025-02-18T22:08:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…ktmn
_________________________

Yeah I got a new mic but the office echo still seems to overpower it

Just @nprofile…d0r5 and I today, but I thought it was a good ...

2025-02-18T20:07:49Z

Just Murch (nprofile…d0r5) and I today, but I thought it was a good one...

quoting
nevent1q…3pv4
Earlier today Murch (nprofile…d0r5) and schmidty (nprofile…tz3n) discussed Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #341:

- probabilistic payments
- ephemeral anchors
- Bitcoin network monitoring and orphan evictions
- BIP3
- cluster mempool
... and more!

Catch up:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2025/02/18/

The Lightning Torch, but with Satoshi's identity.

2025-02-18T19:29:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…8j8v
_________________________

The Lightning Torch, but with Satoshi's identity.

Brink is grateful to receive a $50,000 contribution, in BTC, from ...

2025-02-18T18:36:33Z

Brink is grateful to receive a $50,000 contribution, in BTC, from Bitwise, to support our Bitcoin open source development work.

Bitwise donated $150,000 across Brink, HRF, and OpenSats for Bitcoin open source developers.

Thank you to hong (nprofile…hxmx) , Hunter Horsley, and the Bitwise team for supporting Bitcoin open source! 🧡

"Open Source Software and Corporate Influence" ...

2025-02-15T10:09:16Z

"Open Source Software and Corporate Influence"

https://www.alilleybrinker.com/blog/open-source-software-and-corporate-influence/

What a line up with 8 guests on Bitcoin Optech this week! Each of ...

2025-02-15T10:08:21Z

What a line up with 8 guests on Bitcoin Optech this week!

Each of the segments in this podcast was really a podcast in itself. Something for everyone in the timestamps.

quoting
nevent1q…z6ka
Earlier this week Optech was joined by Matt Morehouse, Johan Halseth, Pieter Wuille, Sergi Delgado, Bastien Teinturier, Oleksandr Kurbatov, Antoine Poinsot and Bob McElrath to discuss Newsletter #340.

Catch up:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2025/02/11/

Down for keeps! Delivered within just a few days, thank you, ...

2025-02-15T10:05:11Z

Down for keeps!

Delivered within just a few days, thank you, BTCillustrated (nprofile…04uy) !

Check out the Bitcoin Block Reorg Calculator:
https://t.co/drsdVJ8Pbt

quoting
nevent1q…60ex
Up for grabs!

Bitcoin Optech would like to add a Block Reorg Calculator to our site.

If you would like to implement the (corrected) calculations outlined in chapter 11 of the Bitcoin white paper, we are looking for external contributions!

Inquire within:

https://github.com/bitcoinops/bitcoinops.github.io/issues/2156

Is it the longest weekly optech newsletter? #note164c…8ty6

2025-02-07T11:38:31Z

Is it the longest weekly optech newsletter?

quoting note164c…8ty6
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #340 is here:

- announces a fixed vulnerability affecting LDK
- summarizes discussion about zero-knowledge gossip for LN channel announcements
- describes the discovery of previous research that can be applied to finding optimal cluster linearizations
- provides an update on the development of the Erlay protocol for reducing transaction relay bandwidth
- looks at tradeoffs between different scripts for implementing LN ephemeral anchors
- relays a proposal for emulating an OP_RAND opcode in a privacy-preserving manner with no consensus changes required
- points to renewed discussion about lowering the minimum transaction feerate
- Optech Newsletter #340 Recap on Riverside

https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/02/07/

Matt Morehouse posted to Delving Bitcoin to announce a vulnerability affecting LDK that he responsibly disclosed and which was fixed in LDK version 0.1.1...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/02/07/#channel-force-closure-vulnerability-in-ldk

Johan Halseth posted to Delving Bitcoin with an extension to the proposed 1.75 channel announcement protocol that would allow other nodes to verify that a channel was backed by a funding transaction, preventing multiple cheap DoS attacks, but without revealing which UTXO is the funding transaction—enhancing privacy...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/02/07/#zero-knowledge-gossip-for-ln-channel-announcements

Stefan Richter posted to Delving Bitcoin about a research paper from 1989 he found that has a proven algorithm that can be used to efficiently find the highest-feerate subset of a group of transactions that will be topologically valid if the subset is included in a block...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/02/07/#discovery-of-previous-research-for-finding-optimal-cluster-linearization

Sergi Delgado made several posts to Delving Bitcoin about his work over the past year implementing Erlay for Bitcoin Core...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/02/07/#erlay-update

Bastien Teinturier posted to Delving Bitcoin to ask for opinions about what ephemeral anchor script should be used as one of the outputs to TRUC-based LN commitment transactions as a replacement for existing anchor outputs...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/02/07/#tradeoffs-in-ln-ephemeral-anchor-scripts

Oleksandr Kurbatov posted to Delving Bitcoin about an interactive protocol that allows two parties to make a contract that will pay out in a way that neither can predict, which is functionally equivalent to randomly...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/02/07/#emulating-op-rand

Greg Tonoski posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list about lowering the default minimum transaction relay feerate...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/02/07/#discussion-about-lowering-the-minimum-transaction-relay-feerate

Antoine Poinsot made several posts to the Delving Bitcoin thread about the consensus cleanup soft fork suggesting parameter changes...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/02/07/#updates-to-cleanup-soft-fork-proposal

Bob McElrath posted to Delving Bitcoin requesting developers working on covenant designs to consider how their favorite proposal, or a new proposal, could assist in the creation of an efficient decentralized mining pool...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/02/07/#request-for-a-covenant-design-supporting-braidpool

A thread from April 2024 received renewed attention this past month. Previously, Bob McElrath posted about having miners commit to the transactions in their mempool and then only allowing them to include transactions in their blocks that were deterministically selected from previous commitments...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/02/07/#deterministic-transaction-selection-from-a-committed-mempool

Developer Zawy posted to Delving Bitcoin about a mining difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA) for a directed acyclic graph (DAG) type blockchain...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/02/07/#fast-difficulty-adjustment-algorithm-for-a-dag-blockchain

Difficulty adjustment algorithms
Difficulty adjustment algorithms (DAAs) are the methods by which mining difficulty is regulated, which affects the average time between blocks, the total amount of block space, and the rate of distribution of new bitcoins (the block subsidy)...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/topics/difficulty-adjustment-algorithms/

Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guests Matt Morehouse, Bastien Teinturier, Bob McElrath, and Antoine Poinsot on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
https://riverside.fm/studio/bitcoin-optech

"For a sixth year running, regular Bitcoin Core contributors ...

2025-02-07T10:16:23Z

"For a sixth year running, regular Bitcoin Core contributors received a survey to surface priorities and ensure that people feel that they can contribute effectively. Below is a summary of the results in a format similar to previous years’ surveys."

PRs Opened and Merged by Year

Regarding Goals/Priorities for 2025

Areas of frustration/disappointment in 2024

Changes to improve the process/project

Check out the the full post:
https://adamjonas.com/bitcoin/coredev/retro/coredev-2024-retro/

Thanks jonas (nprofile…z4ak) for putting this together

Brink renews our financial support for all of our 8 Bitcoin Core ...

2025-02-06T18:25:10Z

Brink renews our financial support for all of our 8 Bitcoin Core engineers through 2025!

Thank you to Michael Ford (fanquake), Gloria Zhao, Hennadii Stepanov, Sebastian Falbesoner, Niklas Gögge, Stéphan Vuylsteke, Fabian Jahr, and Marco De Leon for your amazing work on Bitcoin and we are proud to support you. 🙏

If you're curious about the work these engineers are doing, we have a detailed annual report in the works.

In the meantime check out last year's annual report
https://brink.dev/blog/2024/09/25/2023-annual-report/

Up for grabs! Bitcoin Optech would like to add a Block Reorg ...

2025-02-06T15:36:03Z

Up for grabs!

Bitcoin Optech would like to add a Block Reorg Calculator to our site.

If you would like to implement the (corrected) calculations outlined in chapter 11 of the Bitcoin white paper, we are looking for external contributions!

Inquire within:

https://github.com/bitcoinops/bitcoinops.github.io/issues/2156

This week's Bitcoin Core PR review club PR is #31363, ...

2025-02-05T16:43:58Z

This week's Bitcoin Core PR review club PR is #31363, "Cluster mempool: introduce TxGraph", authored by Pieter Wuille and hosted by
and hosted by Gloria Zhao.

Notes and questions are available on the website, including a gentle introduction to cluster mempool and mempool architecture

Starting in 15 minutes!

https://bitcoincore.reviews/31363

Listen to: - Yuval Kogman’s disclosed coinjoin vulnerabilities ...

2025-01-08T16:17:41Z

Listen to:

- Yuval Kogman’s disclosed coinjoin vulnerabilities
- Jeremy Rubin's thoughts on soft fork proposals
- the BDK 1.0.0 release with Steve Myers
- transitory soft fork discussion

https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2025/01/07/

Nailed the @npub1syl…6ksu tagging here

2025-01-08T16:15:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…dc22
_________________________

Nailed the David A. Harding (npub1syl…6ksu) tagging here

Please take a moment to provide Optech feedback on how we are ...

2025-01-03T16:16:07Z

Please take a moment to provide Optech feedback on how we are doing by filling out a short survey 🙏

quoting note1n98…hasj
Bitcoin Optech would like your feedback!

Let us know in this survey what parts of the newsletter and website are valuable for you and how we can make Optech an even better Bitcoin technical resource.

https://forms.gle/RknVv5Etx4D5MVVt8

New Optech monthly segment: "A new monthly section ...

2025-01-03T15:40:24Z

New Optech monthly segment:

"A new monthly section summarizing proposals and discussion about changing Bitcoin’s consensus rules."

quoting note1j9x…krkt
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #335 is here:

- links to information about longstanding deanonymization vulnerabilities in software using centralized coinjoin protocols
- summarizes an update to a draft BIP about the ChillDKG distributed key generation protocol compatible with scriptless threshold signing
- adds a new monthly section summarizing proposals and discussion about changing Bitcoin’s consensus rules
- Optech Newsletter #335 Recap on Riverside
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/01/03/

Yuval Kogman posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list details about several privacy-reducing vulnerabilities in the centralized coinjoin protocols used by current versions of the Wasabi and Ginger wallets, plus past versions of the Samourai, Sparrow, and Trezor Suite software wallets...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/01/03/#deanonymization-attacks-against-centralized-coinjoin

Tim Ruffing and Jonas Nick posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a link to the current draft BIP for ChillDKG, which describes a distributed key generation protocol compatible with FROST scriptless threshold signatures for Bitcoin...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/01/03/#updated-chilldkg-draft

Changing consensus:

- CTV enhancement opcodes
- Adjusting difficulty beyond 256 bits
- Transitory soft forks for cleanup soft forks
- Quantum computer upgrade path
- Consensus cleanup timewarp grace period
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/01/03/#changing-consensus

Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter with special guest Yuval Kogman on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
https://riverside.fm/studio/bitcoin-optech

Incredible! Let me know how it goes for you

2024-12-27T13:22:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…8f2l
_________________________

Incredible! Let me know how it goes for you

You could try rust? ...

2024-12-26T22:13:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…289d
_________________________

You could try rust?

https://btcdemy.thinkific.com/courses/intro-to-rust

There are some materials for the seminars that are on the same ...

2024-12-26T20:52:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…dy2h
_________________________

There are some materials for the seminars that are on the same site which are very useful as well. But you’ll miss the teammates, coaches, and accountability pieces.

Nostr event nevent1qqsq588hwqkyvvn706w8zfxm56j3qjhxj6v5xsnzaanugtw964shazqzyq2rn2759xq3vh4vengyd02kt2k3nu33f2f6mx7sntvruv6zhmye7lzgs2a

2024-12-26T20:44:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…ezvx
_________________________

~10 hours per week estimated

2024-12-26T20:39:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…qrdl
_________________________

~10 hours per week estimated

If you’ve thought about contributing to Bitcoin open source, I ...

2024-12-26T20:23:27Z

If you’ve thought about contributing to Bitcoin open source, I cannot recommend enough applying for the ‘Start your career in Bitcoin open source’ program.

The lowest risk path to contribute to the projects you use, know, and love: Bitcoin Core, Lightning, BDK, rust-bitcoin, and more

It's a 2 month, online program that is completely FREE (thank you, Chaincode)

Don't wait another year. Don't wait to watch another couple Bitcoin development YT videos

Get in the arena. Help build magic internet money

Applications close December 31

Agenda:

Week 0: RPC Scavenger Hunt
Week 1: Build a wallet
Week 2: Wallet management
Week 3: P2P & Mining
Week 4: Lightning

Bring a proof of concept to life
Explore the ₿OSS ecosystem
Meet ₿OSS maintainers
Choose a ₿OSS project and provide value
Get coaching on the next step

https://learning.chaincode.com/#BOSS

Very cool. Confirm receipt, thank you Carlos!

2024-12-24T18:42:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…22ga
_________________________

Very cool. Confirm receipt, thank you Carlos!

Carlos thanks for reaching out! bitcoinbrink@zbd.gg

2024-12-23T21:34:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…mahd
_________________________

Carlos thanks for reaching out!

bitcoinbrink@zbd.gg

Like what

2024-12-20T19:59:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…kmfw
_________________________

Like what

A big thank you to the HRF who proactively and quietly donated ...

2024-12-20T16:58:39Z

A big thank you to the HRF who proactively and quietly donated $20,000 USD to Bitcoin Optech for expenses related to the Optech newsletter and podcast

🧡

For anyone who has the Optech newsletters sitting in their email ...

2024-12-20T15:39:34Z

For anyone who has the Optech newsletters sitting in their email box or in a todo list somewhere, waiting to be read, feeling guilty...

We offer amnesty this week: read the 2024 year-in-review and all is forgiven. Start 2025 clean.

quoting
note1qvz…0vhz
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #334: 2024 Year-in-Review Special is here:

- notes Bitcoin developments during each month of 2024
- feature: Vulnerability disclosures
- feature: Cluster mempool
- feature: P2P transaction relay
- feature: Covenants and script upgrades
- feature: Major releases of popular infrastructure projects
- feature: Optech
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/12/20/

In 2024, Optech summarized more than two dozen vulnerability disclosures...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/12/20/#vulnreports

An idea for a mempool redesign from 2023 became a particular focus for several Bitcoin Core developers throughout 2024...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/12/20/#cluster

Fee management has always been a challenge in the decentralized Bitcoin protocol, but widespread use of contract protocols such as LN-Penalty and ongoing research into newer and more complex protocols has made it more important than ever to ensure users can pay and increase fees on demand. Bitcoin Core contributors have been working on this problem for years, and 2024 saw the public release of several new features that significantly improve the situation...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/12/20/#p2prelay

Several developers devoted much of their time in 2024 towards advancing proposals for covenants, scripting upgrades, and other changes that would support advanced contract protocols such as joinpools and channel factories...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/12/20/#covs

Optech covered major releases of popular infrastructure projects throughout the year...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/12/20/#releases

In Optech’s seventh year, we published:

- 51 newsletters
- 35 new topic pages
- over 120,000 words, a 350pg book equivalent
- a wallet guide for developers
- over 59hr of podcasts, with 488,000 words of transcripts w/75 guests
- 200+ non-English translations
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/12/20/#optech

Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this special newsletter with special guests Dave Harding, Niklas Gögge, Gloria Zhao, and Brandon Black on Riverside.fm Monday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
https://riverside.fm/studio/bitcoin-optech

I get the impression that this is pretty common for Optech ...

2024-12-20T14:58:06Z

I get the impression that this is pretty common for Optech readers.

Would some periodic less-technical “Optech decoded” or “Optech translated” summary be helpful?

Thank you to Dave Harding for authoring this Optech ...

2024-12-20T14:55:26Z

Thank you to Dave Harding for authoring this Optech year-in-review and for being the primary author of the Optech Newsletter year round.

David A. Harding (npub1syl…6ksu)

quoting
note1qvz…0vhz
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #334: 2024 Year-in-Review Special is here:

- notes Bitcoin developments during each month of 2024
- feature: Vulnerability disclosures
- feature: Cluster mempool
- feature: P2P transaction relay
- feature: Covenants and script upgrades
- feature: Major releases of popular infrastructure projects
- feature: Optech
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/12/20/

In 2024, Optech summarized more than two dozen vulnerability disclosures...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/12/20/#vulnreports

An idea for a mempool redesign from 2023 became a particular focus for several Bitcoin Core developers throughout 2024...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/12/20/#cluster

Fee management has always been a challenge in the decentralized Bitcoin protocol, but widespread use of contract protocols such as LN-Penalty and ongoing research into newer and more complex protocols has made it more important than ever to ensure users can pay and increase fees on demand. Bitcoin Core contributors have been working on this problem for years, and 2024 saw the public release of several new features that significantly improve the situation...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/12/20/#p2prelay

Several developers devoted much of their time in 2024 towards advancing proposals for covenants, scripting upgrades, and other changes that would support advanced contract protocols such as joinpools and channel factories...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/12/20/#covs

Optech covered major releases of popular infrastructure projects throughout the year...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/12/20/#releases

In Optech’s seventh year, we published:

- 51 newsletters
- 35 new topic pages
- over 120,000 words, a 350pg book equivalent
- a wallet guide for developers
- over 59hr of podcasts, with 488,000 words of transcripts w/75 guests
- 200+ non-English translations
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2024/12/20/#optech

Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this special newsletter with special guests Dave Harding, Niklas Gögge, Gloria Zhao, and Brandon Black on Riverside.fm Monday at 15:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
https://riverside.fm/studio/bitcoin-optech

🙏 I have this BIP353 address: zanyasp01@phoenixwallet.me ...

2024-12-13T17:36:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…4gdu
_________________________

🙏

I have this BIP353 address: zanyasp01@phoenixwallet.me
Unsure if Ive connected this to my nostrils