schmidty

bitcoin

Bruno Garcia joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #388:

- Incremental mutation testing in Bitcoin Core
- BIP process updated
- And more

You can listen on our website:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2026/01/20/

Fountain:
https://fountain.fm/episode/TsQ3V8lAG5hrYWMbmXbn 

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/65vfvLBYDXG6I7scbT5cyO

Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-optech-newsletter-388-recap/id1674626983?i=1000745948643

Mutation testing, BIP3 - Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #388 Recap Podcast

Bitcoin Optech newsletter #388 is here:

- links to a discussion of incremental mutation testing in Bitcoin Core
- announces deployment of a new BIP process
- Optech Newsletter #388 Podcast
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/16/

Bruno Garcia posted to Delving Bitcoin about his current work on improving mutation testing in Bitcoin Core. Mutation testing is a technique that allows developers to assess the effectiveness of their tests by intentionally adding systemic bugs, called mutants, to the codebase...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/16/#an-overview-of-incremental-mutation-testing-in-bitcoin-core

After more than two months of discussion on the mailing list and another round of amendments to the proposal, it became clear this week that BIP3 had achieved rough consensus...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/16/#bip-process-updated

Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on http://Riverside.fm Tuesday at 17:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
https://riverside.com/studio/bitcoin-optech

Mutants, Bip process - Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #388

Silent payments, Ark - Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #387 Recap Podcast

René Pickhardt and Craig Raw joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #387:

- Bitcoin Core wallet migration bug
- Using Ark as a channel factory
- Draft BIP for silent payment descriptors
- And more

You can listen on our website:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2026/01/13/

Fountain:
https://fountain.fm/episode/CxvwArgstb80HNzZWxiC

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6jn03puzikUjsuQD4Bmp21

Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-optech-newsletter-387-recap/id1674626983?i=1000745147513

Bitcoin Optech newsletter #387 is here:

- warns of a wallet migration bug in Bitcoin Core
- summarizes a post about using the Ark protocol as an LN channel factory
- links to a draft BIP for silent payment descriptors
- Optech Newsletter #387 Podcast
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/09/

Bitcoin Core posted a notice of a bug in the legacy wallet migration feature in versions 30.0 and 30.1...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/09/#bitcoin-core-wallet-migration-bug

René Pickhardt wrote on Delving Bitcoin about his discussions and ideas around whether Ark’s best use case might be as a flexible channel factory rather than as an end-user payment solution...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/09/#using-ark-as-a-channel-factory

Craig Raw posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a proposal for a draft BIP, which defines a new top-level descriptor script expression sp() for silent payments...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/09/#draft-bip-for-silent-payment-descriptors

Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on http://Riverside.fm Tuesday at 17:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
https://riverside.com/studio/bitcoin-optech

Wallet bug, Ark, silent payment descriptors - Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #387

Fuzzamoto is a fuzz testing tool for Bitcoin full nodes. For the last year, Niklas Gögge 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/

Fuzzamoto fuzz testing tool for Bitcoin full nodes: Part 1 Introduction

Anthony Towns and Mikhail Kudinov joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #386.

- A notice about the wallet migration bug in Bitcoin Core
- Building a vault using blinded co-signers
- BIP for Peer feature negotiation
- Year 2106 timestamp overflow
- BIP54 timestamp restriction for a timestamp overflow soft fork
- Mitigating a CTV footgun
- CTV activation meeting
- OP_CHECKCONSOLIDATION to enable cheaper consolidations
- Hash-based signatures post-quantum Bitcoin
- And more

You can listen on our website:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2026/01/06/

Fountain:
https://fountain.fm/episode/LSYvA10Nd4ToHfmuKhvX

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/21GFU6WOODEv2s9F2NvBtB

Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-optech-newsletter-386-recap/id1674626983?i=1000744026375

Changing Consensus, vaults, P2P - Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #386 Recap Podcast

Fanquake hits 5,000 commits to Bitcoin Core

Bitcoin Optech newsletter #386 is here:

- summarizes a vault-like scheme using blinded MuSig2
- describes a proposal for Bitcoin clients to announce and negotiate support for new P2P features
- links to 2106 timestamp overflow discussion and considerations around BIP54
- notes a CTV activation meeting and CTV footgun discussion
- summarizes the OP_CHECKCONSOLIDATION proposal
- links to a report of hash-based post-quantum signature schemes
- Optech Newsletter #386 Podcast
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/02/

Jonathan T. Halseth posted to Delving Bitcoin a prototype of a vault-like scheme using blinded co-signers. Unlike traditional setups using co-signers, this scheme uses a blinded version of MuSig2 to ensure the signers know as little as possible about the funds they are involved in signing...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/02/#building-a-vault-using-blinded-co-signers

Anthony Towns posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list about a proposal for a new BIP to define a P2P message that would allow peers to announce and negotiate support for new features...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/02/#peer-feature-negotiation

Asher Haim posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list asking Bitcoin developers to act promptly to prepare for a migration from uint32 to uint64 block timestamps...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/02/#year-2106-timestamp-overflow-uint64-migration

Josh Doman posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list and Delving Bitcoin asking whether it’s might be worthwhile to modify the consensus cleanup proposal to be more permissive to odd block timestamp behavior to allow a potential soft fork solution to the 2106 block timestamp overflow issue...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/02/#relax-bip54-timestamp-restriction-for-2106-soft-fork

Chris Stewart posted to Delving Bitcoin a discussion of a “footgun” with OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV)...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/02/#understanding-and-mitigating-a-ctv-footgun

Developer 1440000bytes hosted a CTV (BIP119) activation meeting...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/02/#ctv-activation-meeting

billymcbip proposed an opcode specifically optimized for consolidations. OP_CHECKCONSOLIDATION (CC) would evaluate to 1 if and only if it’s executed on an input with the same scriptPubKey as an earlier input in the same transaction...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/02/#op-checkconsolidation-to-enable-cheaper-consolidations

Mikhail Kudinov and Jonas Nick posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list about their work on evaluating hash-based signatures for use in Bitcoin...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/01/02/#hash-based-signatures-for-bitcoin-s-post-quantum-future

Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on http://Riverside.fm Tuesday at 17:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
https://riverside.com/studio/bitcoin-optech

Changing Consensus, vaults, peer negotiation  - Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #386

Bastien Teinturier, Rearden Code, and Pieter Wuille joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #385: 2025 Year-in-Review Special.

Catch up on Bitcoin developments in 2025.

You can listen on our website:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2025/12/23/

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5zOXBAt2NHVWEVtESfFD5P

Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-optech-newsletter-385-2025-year-in-review-special/id1674626983?i=1000742621959


2025 Year-in-Review Special Recap - Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #385 Recap Podcast

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

Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #385: 2025 Year-in-Review Special

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:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2025/12/16/

Fountain:
https://fountain.fm/episode/ISFK9esZAmFyJFGGdafW 

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2nvIdmLhoJRWKNQkynBVG8 

Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-optech-newsletter-384-recap/id1674626983?i=1000741577702 

Secure enclaves,, LN bugs, Q&A - Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #384 Recap Podcast

Bitcoin Optech newsletter #384 is here:

- discloses vulnerabilities in LND
- describes a project for running a virtual machine in an embedded secure element
- summarizes changes to services/client software
- summarizes popular Q&A from Stack Exchange
- Optech Newsletter #384 Podcast
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/12/

Matt Morehouse posted to Delving Bitcoin about critical vulnerabilities fixed in LND 0.19.0...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/12/#critical-vulnerabilities-fixed-in-lnd-0-19-0

Salvatoshi posted to Delving Bitcoin about Vanadium, a virtualized secure enclave for hardware signing devices...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/12/#a-virtualized-secure-enclave-for-hardware-signing-devices

Changes to services and client software:
- Interactive transaction visualization tool
- BlueWallet v7.2.2 released
- Stratum v2 updates
- Auradine announces Stratum v2 support
- LDK Node 0.7.0 released
- BIP-329 Python Library 1.0.0 release
- Bitcoin Safe 1.6.0 released
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/12/#changes-to-services-and-client-software

Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange:
- Does a clearnet connection to my Lightning node require a TLS certificate?
- Why do different implementations produce different DER signatures for the same private key and hash? 
- Why is the miniscript after value limited at 0x80000000? 
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/12/#selected-qa-from-bitcoin-stack-exchange

Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on http://Riverside.fm Tuesday at 17:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
https://riverside.fm/studio/bitcoin-optech

LND vulnerabilities, Vanadium  - Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #384

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

Bitcoin NOPtech Discussion w/Murch and Schmidty

Moonsettler and Julian joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #383:

- A consensus bug in the NBitcoin library found with differential fuzzing
- LNHANCE soft fork proposal updates
- Benchmarking Bitcoin Script under the proposed varops budget
- Optimizations to SLH-DSA (SPHINCS) post-quantum signatures
- And More

You can listen on our website:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2025/12/09/ 

Fountain:
https://fountain.fm/episode/hWoSXyZivt2VIK3sD2m5 

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7xoG5U9JOs579CkQhc1G58 

Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-optech-newsletter-383-recap/id1674626983?i=1000740473439 

LNHANCE, varops, post-quantum - Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #383 Recap Podcast

Bitcoin Optech newsletter #383 is here:

- describes a fixed vulnerability affecting the NBitcoin library
- summarizes the LNHANCE soft fork proposal
- relays a call to action to benchmark Bitcoin script execution under GSR's varops budget
- highlights discussion of optimizations to SLH-DSA (SPHINCS) post-quantum signatures
- Optech Newsletter #383 Podcast
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/05/

Bruno Garcia posted to Delving Bitcoin about a theoretical consensus failure in NBitcoin that could occur when using OP_NIP...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/05/#consensus-bug-in-nbitcoin-library

Moonsettler proposes a soft fork for LNHANCE now that all four of its constituent opcodes have updated BIPs and reference implementations...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/05/#lnhance-soft-fork

Julian posted a call to action to benchmark Bitcoin script execution under the varops budget...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/05/#benchmarking-the-varops-budget

Continuing the discussions around hardening Bitcoin against quantum computing, conduition presented his work on optimizing the SPHINCS signing algorithm...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/12/05/#slh-dsa-sphincs-post-quantum-signature-optimizations

Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 17:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
https://riverside.fm/studio/bitcoin-optech


Changing consensus - Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #383

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

- Updated stats on compact block reconstructions
- A motion to activate BIP3 and replace the current BIP process
- 3 questions from the Bitcoin Stack Exchange
- And more

You can listen on our website:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2025/12/02/

Fountain:
https://fountain.fm/episode/93Jhx6LCQCiZDKQYppJ8

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3RlXvoyRoZW5Rw1u3GcsIM

Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-optech-newsletter-382-recap/id1674626983?i=1000739533949

Compact blocks, BIP3, Q&A - Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #382 Recap Podcast

Bitcoin Optech newsletter #382 is here:

- provides an update on compact block reconstruction discussions
- relays a call to activate BIP3
- summarizes popular Q&A from Stack Exchange
- Optech Newsletter #382 Podcast
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/11/28/

0xB10C posted an update to Delving Bitcoin about his statistics around compact block reconstruction...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/11/28/#stats-on-compact-block-reconstructions-updates

Murch posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a formal motion to activate BIP3...
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/11/28/#motion-to-activate-bip3

Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange:
- Do pruned nodes store witness inscriptions?
- Increasing probability of block hash collisions when difficulty is too high
- What is the purpose of the initial 0x04 byte in all extended public and private keys?
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/11/28/#selected-qa-from-bitcoin-stack-exchange

Bitcoin Optech will host an audio recap discussion of this newsletter on Riverside.fm Tuesday at 17:30 UTC. Join us to discuss or ask questions!
https://riverside.fm/studio/bitcoin-optech

Compact blocks, BIP3, Stack Exchange - Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #382

We published Brink's annual financial and organizational report for the community. Feedback and questions welcome.

Brink’s 2024 Annual Financial Report

Antoine Poinsot and ZmnSCPxj joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #381:

- Modeling stale rates by propagation delay and mining centralization
- Private key handover for collaborative closure
- Updates to services and client software
- And more

You can listen on our website:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2025/11/25/

Fountain:
https://fountain.fm/episode/3zDWx0jj8JOTj9ukAoC6

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0BsoRU9mZZiLLlDYFtLo0W

Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-optech-newsletter-381-recap/id1674626983?i=1000738423632