Bitcoin Optech Podcast

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Daniela Brozzoni, Naiyoma, and Thomas Voegtlin to discuss  Newsletter #404 . News ● Possible solutions to node fingerprinting (1:14) ● Public fraud proof for just-in-time channels (19:21) Notable code and documentation changes ● Bitcoin Core #33796 (37:11) ● Bitcoin Core #21283 (39:30) ● BIPs #2150 (45:30) ● Eclair #3144 (...

Gustavo Flores Echaiz and Brandon Black are joined by Olaoluwa Osuntokun to discuss  Newsletter #403 . News ● Binary fuse filters as an alternative to BIP158's GCS (19:05) Changing consensus ● Post-quantum HD wallets with fallback SPHINCS keys (31:07) ● Discussion of a post-quantum output type (34:42) ● Proposal to embed post-quantum keys in tapscript without consensus changes (38:03) ● BIP54...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Gustavo Flores Echaiz are joined by Toby Sharp to discuss  Newsletter #402 . News ● Hornet Node's declarative executable specification of Bitcoin consensus rules (1:02) ● Onion message jamming in the Lightning Network (23:22) Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange ● Why did BIP342 replace CHECKMULTISIG with a new opcode, instead of just removing FindAndDelete fro...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Remix7531 and Luis Schwab to discuss  Newsletter #401 . News ● Discussion of using nested MuSig2 in the Lightning Network (34:05) ● Formal verification of secp256k1 modular scalar multiplication (01:10) Changes to services and client software ● Coldcard 6.5.0 adds MuSig2 and miniscript (40:56) ● Frigate 1.4.0 released (41:...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Julian Moik to discuss  ⁠Newsletter #400⁠ . Bitcoin Core PR Review Club ● Testing Bitcoin Core 31.0 Release Candidates (29:00) Notable code and documentation changes ● Bitcoin Core #33908 (31:56) ● Eclair #3283 (37:06) ● LDK #4529 (38:12) ● LDK #4494 (39:55) ● LND #10666 (45:31) ● BIPs #2099 (46:40) ● BIPs #2118 (1:15) ● B...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Armin Sabouri, Pyth, Conduition, and Jonas Nick to discuss  Newsletter #399 . News ● Wallet fingerprinting risks for payjoin privacy (44:15) ● Draft BIP for a wallet backup metadata format (1:04:26) Changing consensus ● Compact Isogeny PQC can replace HD wallets, key-tweaking, silent payments (24:23) ● Varops budget and ta...

Mike Schmidt and Gustavo Flores Echaiz are joined by Dusty Daemon to discuss  ⁠Newsletter #398⁠ . Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange ● What is meant by Bitcoin doesn't use encryption? (28:44) ● When and why did Bitcoin Script shift to a commit–reveal structure? (30:26) ● Does P2TR-MS (Taproot M-of-N multisig) leak public keys? (31:50) ● Does OP_CHECKSIGFROMSTACK intentionally allow c...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Matt Corallo, Gregory Sanders, and Sebastian van Staa to discuss  ⁠Newsletter #397⁠ . Changes to services and client software ● Cake Wallet adds Lightning support (1:06:09) ● Sparrow 2.4.0 and 2.4.2 released (1:13:15) ● Blockstream Jade adds Lightning via Liquid (1:15:33) ● Lightning Labs releases agent tools (14:49) ● Tet...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Jonathan Harvey-Buschel to discuss  ⁠Newsletter #396⁠ . News ● Collision-resistant hash function for Bitcoin Script (0:30) ● Continued discussion of Gossip Observer traffic analysis tool (8:58) Releases and release candidates ● BDK wallet 3.0.0-rc.1 (28:04) Notable code and documentation changes ● Bitcoin Core #26988 (30:3...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Jon McAlpine, Antoine Poinsot, Mike Casey, and Ethan Heilman to discuss  Newsletter #395 . News ● A standard for stateless VTXO verification (1:31) ● Draft BIP for expanded `nVersion` nonce space for miners (1:23:45) Changing consensus ● Extensions to standard tooling for TEMPLATEHASH-CSFS-IK support (13:52) ● Hourglass V2...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by Craig Raw and Fabian Jahr to discuss  Newsletter #393 . News ● Draft BIP for output script descriptor annotations (1:25) Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange ● Is Bitcoin BIP324 v2 P2P transport distinguishable from random traffic? (35:16) ● What if a miner just broadcasts the header and never gives the block? (39:53) Releases and release...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Misha Komarov, Erik De Smedt, and arbedout to discuss  ⁠Newsletter #393⁠ . News ● Recent OP_RETURN output statistics (45:54) ● Bitcoin PIPEs v2 (1:33) Changes to services and client software ● Second releases hArk-based Ark software (20:21) ● Amboss announces RailsX (55:35) ● Nunchuk adds silent payment support (56:11) ● E...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Gustavo Flores Echaiz are joined by Sebastian Falbesoner and Oleksandr Kurbatov to discuss  ⁠Newsletter #392⁠ . News ● Proposal to limit the number of per-group silent payment recipients (1:13) ● BLISK, Boolean circuit Logic Integrated into the Single Key (26:43) Releases and release candidates ● Bitcoin Core 29.3 (49:18) ● LDK 0.2.2 (51:16) ● HWI 3.2.0 (52:20) ● Bitcoin I...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Toby Sharp, Chris Hyunhum Cho, Jonas Nick, and Antoine Poinsot to discuss  ⁠Newsletter #391⁠ . News ● A constant-time parallelized UTXO database (25:40) ● Bithoven: A formally verified, imperative language for Bitcoin Script (44:48) ● Discussion of dust attack mitigations (1:43:33) Changing consensus ● SHRINCS: 324-byte st...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Gustavo Flores Echaiz are joined by Liam Eagen to discuss  Newsletter #390 . News ● Argo: a garbled-circuits scheme with more efficient off-chain computation (0:48) ● LN-Symmetry update (26:05) Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange ● What is stored in dbcache and with what priority? (34:21) ● Can one do a coinjoin in Shielded CSV? (24:02) ● In Bitcoin Core, how to u...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by René Pickhardt to discuss  ⁠Newsletter #389⁠ . News ● A mathematical theory of payment channel networks (0:31) Changes to services and client software ● Electrum server for testing silent payments (30:04) ● BDK WASM library (33:28) Releases and release candidates ● Core Lightning 25.12.1 (35:14) ● LND 0.20.1-beta.rc1 (39:14) Notable code and docu...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Bruno Garcia to discuss  ⁠Newsletter #388⁠ . News ● An overview of incremental mutation testing in Bitcoin Core (0:43) ● BIP process updated (18:53) Releases and release candidates ● Bitcoin Core 30.2 (26:31) ● BTCPay Server 2.3.3 (27:23) Notable code and documentation changes ● Bitcoin Core #33819 (28:42) ● Bitcoin Core #...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by René Pickhardt and Craig Raw to discuss  ⁠Newsletter #387⁠ . News ● Bitcoin Core wallet migration bug (0:55) ● Using Ark as a channel factory (7:47) ● Draft BIP for silent payment descriptors (29:02) Releases and release candidates ● Bitcoin Core 30.2rc1 (58:34) Notable code and documentation changes ● Bitcoin Core #34156...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Anthony Towns and Mikhail Kudinov to discuss  ⁠Newsletter #386⁠ . News ● Building a vault using blinded co-signers (1:04:09) ● Peer feature negotiation (1:40) Changing consensus ● Year 2106 timestamp overflow uint64 migration (1:07:47) ● Relax BIP54 timestamp restriction for 2106 soft fork (1:11:36) ● Understanding and mit...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by Bastien Teinturier, Rearden Code, and Pieter Wuille to discuss  Newsletter #385: 2025 Year-in-Review Special . January ● Updated ChillDKG draft (43:08) ● Offchain DLCs (45:53) ● Compact block reconstructions (2:29:27) February ● Erlay update (1:53:55) ● LN ephemeral anchor scripts (0:50) ● Probabilistic payments (54:45) March ● Bitcoin Forking Gu...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Matt Morehouse and Salvatore Ingala to discuss  ⁠Newsletter #384⁠ . News ● Critical vulnerabilities fixed in LND 0.19.0 (0:59) ● A virtualized secure enclave for hardware signing devices (21:11) Changes to services and client software ● Interactive transaction visualization tool (37:16) ● BlueWallet v7.2.2 released (38:20)...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Moonsettler and Julian to discuss  Newsletter #383 . News ● Consensus bug in NBitcoin library (1:04) Changing consensus ● LNHANCE soft fork (24:00) ● Benchmarking the varops budget (5:09) ● SLH-DSA (SPHINCS) post-quantum signature optimizations (45:29) Releases and release candidates ● Core Lightning v25.12 (1:02:24) ● LDK...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt discuss  ⁠Newsletter #382⁠ . News ● Stats on compact block reconstructions updates (0:34) ● Motion to activate BIP3 (7:26) Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange ● Do pruned nodes store witness inscriptions? (24:27) ● Increasing probability of block hash collisions when difficulty is too high (29:33) ● What is the purpose of the i...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, Gustavo Flores Echaiz, and Mike Schmidt are joined by Antoine Poinsot and ZmnSCPxj to discuss  Newsletter #381 . News ● Modeling stale rates by propagation delay and mining centralization (1:03) ● Private key handover for collaborative closure (30:55) Changes to services and client software ● Arkade launches (52:32) ● Mempool monitoring mobile application (55:25) ● Web-based...

Mark “Murch” Erhardt and Mike Schmidt are joined by TheCharlatan to discuss  Newsletter #380 . Releases and release candidates ● LND 0.20.0-beta.rc4 (1:30) Notable code and documentation changes ● Bitcoin Core #30595 (2:56) ● Bitcoin Core #33443 (28:03) ● Core Lightning #8656 (29:42) ● Core Lightning #8671 (30:22) ● LDK #4204 (33:09) ● BIPs #2022 (34:45)