Sebastian 🟩🥕

Passionate about #bitcoin (Core contributor since 2019),
nature, OpenBSD, books, bass, beer & chess 🏞️
PGP: 6A8F 9C26 6528 E25A EB1D 7731 C237 1D91 CB71 6EA7

[Sebastian 🟩🥕 @theStack]

🤫

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

There sure has been a lot of *talk* about Bitcoin development these last 18 months. Meanwhile, there's been an awful lot of actual development work done. Examples of what Bitcoin Core has been working on throughout this all:

- a node that syncs in nearly half the time
- a path to 5x faster (SwiftSync)
- a new GUI to make running that node easier, maybe even on mobile
- a redesigned mempool with better fee bumping and fee estimates
- a mining interface so individual miners can build their own block templates (Stratum v2)
- a private broadcast so your transactions can't be traced to your IP
- a reproducible map of the entire internet for node eclipse attack protection
- a better way to relay time-sensitive Lightning and Ark transactions for confirmation
- a multisig that's cheaper, more private, and looks like any other payment on-chain (MuSig2)
- a private payment address with zero linkable payments (silent payments)
- a threshold (e.g. 3-of-5) signature scheme that looks like a single signature (FROST)
- a proposal to fix known protocol bugs and current attack vectors (BIP54)
- a slew of post-quantum research to be ready for future attack vectors
- a first-ever independent security audit for more eyes on the code
- a new tool that attacks a live node the way a real adversary would (Fuzzamoto)
- a fix that killed an entire class of disk-filling attacks
- a replacement for a risky external library
- a consensus engine the whole ecosystem can build on (Bitcoin Kernel)

Over a hundred contributors and more than a dozen funding organizations around the world. Not without controversy. Not without bugs. But undeniable progress.

August will come and go. This work will continue.

[Sebastian 🟩🥕 @theStack]

jlest01, @n1ckler, @LLFOURN, @L0RINC, macgyver13, nymius, @real_or_random, sipa, @provoost, @SomsenRuben, @Sosthene___, @spherostrat, @theuni, w0xlt. 🙏

[Sebastian 🟩🥕 @theStack]

2 and 1/2 years, 5 PR takes, 1284 review comments, 1 protocol change and countless force-pushes and CI runs later, we made it to the finish line and the Silent Payments (BIP-352) module has finally landed in libsecp256k1! 🤫🎉

#1471 → #1519 → #1698 → #1765 🏁✅(→ #1792 🏷️⛔)

[bitcoin++ Insider Edition @btcinsider__]

JUST IN: Silent Payments crypto functions are merged into libsecp256k1, bringing the private payment address scheme one step closer to shipping in bitcoin-core

https://t.co/rMyKgHA26E

[Sebastian 🟩🥕 @theStack]

Over the years, this effort was driven primarily by BIP-352 author @josibake. Huge kudos! 👏🫡 Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen, whether through PR reviews or conceptual discussions:
@achow101, @andrew_s_toth, antonilol, @brrrunog, @craigraw, Eunovo, @fjahr, furszy,

[Brink @bitcoinbrink]

We are excited to announce that Martin Zumsande (@lightlike1) has (re)joined Brink to continue his work on Bitcoin Core including P2P networking, validation, testing, and review!

[Michael Ford @fanquake]

Thanks to all the work done by @fjahr and pinheadz, libevent is no-longer a dependency of Bitcoin Core,

This means a minimal bitcoind, now only has a single, header only, external dependency; which is Boost MultiIndex. Work is ongoing to replace this too.

[Brink @bitcoinbrink]

We are excited to announce that conduition (@conduition_io) has joined Brink as cryptographic engineer working on post-quantum cryptographic research and implementation!

[Sparrow Wallet 🐦 @SparrowWallet]

Sparrow v2.5.0 released with:

Silent Payments (SP) wallets
SP-capable Frigate public server @2140_dev
https://t.co/C7r0pfBGD5 fee rates source

https://t.co/HOEwliSIRd

[Jonas Nick @n1ckler]

TIL that Pieter Wuille published a libsecp256k1 tutorial.

https://t.co/mtuyR68wRP

[Bitcoin Core Project @bitcoincoreorg]

Bitcoin Core v31.0 was released!
It is available from: https://t.co/WpMuMaejz1
Release notes: https://t.co/f7i5N0YSal

[Murch @murchandamus]

BIP376: "Spending Silent Payment Outputs with PSBTs" has been published.

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

With an increasing number of discussions around the BIP54 “Consensus Cleanup” soft fork proposal, I helped put together an information site about BIP54.

“Bitcoin has four known vulnerabilities that have gone unfixed for 15 years. BIP54, "Consensus Cleanup", proposes four narrowly-scoped changes to address these issues in Bitcoin's consensus rules that date back to the original version of Bitcoin in 2009.”

https://t.co/ysNChR35Ib

[Craig Raw 🐦 @craigraw]

Silent payments is not just a new approach to static payment codes. It's the first serious contender to improve the address derivation system since HD wallets in 2013. HD wallets were a big win over single keys, and silent payments could be a similar leap forward.

[bitcoin++ @ seoul, nov 5-6 🇰🇷 @btcplusplus]

Exploits Replay: Nymius presents on a scanning problem with Silent Payment BIP352 that was discovered 6mo ago and his thoughts on how to discover these kinds of vulnerabilities earlier at @btcplusplus exploits edition in Florianopolis, Brazil this past Feb 🇧🇷#btcpp

[HonigdachsPodcast @HonigdachsPod]

Wie könnten wir #Bitcoin quantensicher machen, wie schwer ist das und was bräuchte es dafür? In unserem Quantengipfel fassen wir den aktuellen Stand mit @n1ckler und @murchandamus zusammen. Doch hört am besten selbst!
https://t.co/LwE609hu9e

[Brink @bitcoinbrink]

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.

[Sebastian 🟩🥕 @theStack]

@robin_linus Nice. That reminds me of a similar testnet tx (without the hashing in the redeem script though): https://t.co/peBbiFi5FN
https://t.co/J11HsJ1n2A

[Bitcoin Core Project @bitcoincoreorg]

A new release candidate of Bitcoin Core, v31.0rc1, is available for testing.
This is a new major release, and follows v30.2.
Work-in-progress release notes are here: https://t.co/aSo2yLDKq1
Binaries are available here: https://t.co/5yrfcKk6ri

[Michael Ford @fanquake]

An impementation of BIP 54 "Consensus Cleanup" has been merged by @ajtowns into Bitcoin Inquisition: https://t.co/7LlZk1s4Pr. @darosior continues to push this important work forward.