In this technical discussion, Rusty Russell, Mark Erhardt, and Adam Jonas delve into the intricacies of the Lightning Network (LN) after eight years of development. They emphasize the importance of simplicity and robustness in the protocol, noting how attempts to increase fairness often complicate the system. Russell highlights the ongoing need for improvements in privacy and robustness, pointing out that while these areas aren't usually urgent, they are crucial for long-term stability. They discuss the LN symmetry (formerly Eltoo) proposal, which aims to simplify the protocol by eliminating penalties for unintentional errors, thus making the network easier to maintain. The conversation also touches on the challenges posed by recent fee spikes and the need for better fee management and protocol upgrades. They conclude by acknowledging the significant progress made and the continuous efforts required to keep improving the network

Elle Mouton and Oliver Gugger explained the transition from 2-of-2 Pay-to-Witness-Script-Hash funding outputs to MuSig2 key funding outputs in Taproot channels. This upgrade aims to enhance privacy and chain space savings. The spec for Taproot channels, proposed by Roasbeef, is nearing completion with notable progress from LND and LDK implementations. The podcast also delved into potential updates to the gossip protocol, distinguishing between Gossip 1.5 and 2.0. Gossip 2.0 proposes tying proofs to node announcements rather than individual channels, significantly boosting privacy. The discussion extended to PTLCs (Point Time-Locked Contracts), which promise enhanced privacy and security but require further adoption and development. The iterative approach to these upgrades emphasizes gradual implementation to mitigate risks and ensure stability

The podcast covers the evolution of the Bitcoin Development Kit (BDK), originally known as the Magical Bitcoin Library, from its inception at Blockstream to its current status as a fully-fledged open-source project. Key topics include the renaming of BDK, its foundational use of Rust and descriptors for wallet architecture, and the broad applicability for both individual and enterprise users. Early adopters and contributors to BDK's development are highlighted, alongside discussions on the challenges and technical hurdles such as asynchronous operations and wallet management across multiple descriptors. The conversation also touches on the motivations behind developers preferring to build wallets from scratch and the potential advantages of adopting BDK for future-proofing wallet applications. Upcoming features in BDK 1.0 promise further enhancements, particularly in syncing mechanisms and transaction planning.

Tadge Dryja chats with us about writing the Lightning Network paper and working in the Bitcoin space.

The discussion with Andrew Chow explores the evolution of the Bitcoin Core wallet, emphasizing significant developments like descriptor wallets and PSBT for enhancing functionality and interoperability. The conversation highlights the continuous efforts to refactor and improve the wallet's codebase, addressing challenges and introducing innovations in coin selection and transaction management. The importance of maintaining high security and review standards is underscored, reflecting the wallet's role in supporting Bitcoin's core principles. Future directions include improving the wallet's performance, user experience, and GUI.

Greg Sanders joins us to discuss ANYPREVOUT, ephemeral anchors and LN symmetry (a.k.a. ELTOO).

Speaker 0: 00:00:00 I came into Bitcoin because I like peer-to-peer. I discover more things that I love by doing so. And again, these are not feelings, but they are feelings related to research. Sorry, failing time. Speaker 1: 00:00:12 We're going to make sure our editor takes out The love word. ...

Speaker 1: 00:00:00 Just as a warning, so don't do this at home. Speaker 0: 00:00:01 Yes, of course. Still have your friendly neighborhood cryptographer have a look at it. Speaker 2: 00:00:16 This is the second half of the conversation with Tim and Peter. If you have not listened to the first h...

Pieter Wuille and Tim Ruffing treat us to a conversation about Schnorr, multisignatures, MuSig, and more. We covered a lot so this is part one of a two part conversation.

Clara and Sergei stop by to chat about their recent proposal on mitigating jamming attacks in the Lightning Network. We talk unconditional fees, local reputation, the impact on decentralization and UX, and the state of Lightning in general.

In this conversation, Adam Jonas and Mark Erhardt discuss their work with Josie Baker on Bitcoin data analysis, focusing on mempool data collection and Bitcoin Core wallet improvements. Josie explains his work in standardizing and cleaning mempool data to create a comprehensive, open-source dataset. This dataset will facilitate research and development in areas such as fee estimation and transaction propagation. They also delve into Bitcoin Core wallet enhancements, including privacy improvements and efficient coin selection methods. The conversation highlights the importance of reproducibility, empirical analysis, and open-source collaboration in advancing Bitcoin technology. Josie’s efforts emphasize the value of making Bitcoin data accessible and fostering a community of contributors in the Bitcoin development ecosystem.

Murch: 00:00:00 Hey Jonas. Jonas: 00:00:00 Hey Murch. Murch: 00:00:02 What are we up to? Jonas: 00:00:03 We are back. Murch: 00:00:04 Who are we recording today? Jonas: 00:00:05 We have Steve Lee in the office this week. Murch: 00:00:04 He is the head at Spiral. He's done a lot of open ...

Speaker 0: 00:00:00 Hey, Merch. What up? We are back in the studio. Speaker 1: 00:00:02 Who are we talking to today? We're talking to OXB10C. Speaker 0: 00:00:06 I know him as Timo. So we're going to call him Timo. Speaker 1: 00:00:09 OK, fine. Speaker 0: 00:00:12 It doesn't quite roll off ...

Gloria Zhao sits down with us to discuss her package relay proposal and what it is like as a relative newcomer to propose a big change.

Martin Zumsande joins us to tell us about the address spam in the summer of 2021 and his interests in AddrRelay and Bitcoin Core development.

Postdoc Researcher Sergei joins Murch and Jonas to talk about channel balance probing in Lightning, privacy concerns in general, and the importance of researcher-developer collaboration.

Postdoc Researcher Clara joins Murch to discuss their block building research. They cover their proposal, which outlines suggested improvements to the current Bitcoin Core block building algorithm using candidate sets

Sanket describes to Murch his work on Miniscript. We explore uses for Miniscript, learn about intersections with PSBTs, Output Descriptors, and Taproot, and suss out the difference between Miniscript and Miniscript Policy.

P2P experts Amiti Uttarwar and Pieter Wuille discuss various aspects of peer-to-peer communication in Bitcoin, with Adam Jonas facilitating the conversation. They delve into the challenges and objectives of address relay, highlighting its complexities and the importance of propagating IP addresses to maintain network connectivity and prevent partitioning and eclipse attacks. The discussion covers the design and evolution of AddrMan, introduced in 2012 to manage IP addresses, and the impact of changes like rate-limiting address gossip to mitigate spam. Pieter and Amiti also touch on the significance of maintaining separate network stacks for different network protocols and the potential of employing ASMAP to improve network resilience. The conversation underscores ongoing efforts and future directions for enhancing Bitcoin's P2P network.

In this episode of the Chaincode Podcast, Amiti Uttarwar discusses the intricacies of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in Bitcoin with hosts Adam Jonas and Mark Erhardt. Amiti explains her fascination with P2P due to its logical yet complex interactions across the global network of nodes. She outlines five key principles for designing effective P2P networks: reliability, timeliness, accessibility, privacy, and upgradeability. The conversation delves into specific challenges, such as Eclipse attacks, address relay, and the role of the address manager (AddrMan) in maintaining network integrity. Amiti also highlights the delicate balance between ensuring privacy and achieving network reliability. Overall, the discussion emphasizes the importance of continuous collaboration and innovation in Bitcoin's P2P network development.

In this Chaincode Decoded segment we talk about the fundamental role of Bitcoin's blockchain and some of its peculiarities.

Matt Corallo presentation at Advancing Bitcoin 2019: rust-lightning repo: Intro Adam Jonas (AJ): Welcome back to the office Matt, glad to have you back on the podcast. Matt Corallo (MC): Thank you. Update on LDK AJ: We are going to start with LDK. Where are we at? What is going on? MC: If...

The Chaincode Decoded segment returns and we jump into the deep end of the mempool.

This revisits a segment we call Chaincode Decoded. In this episode, we'll learn how to say Bech32 and also what it and Bech32m are.

AJ: Do you want to talk about isolating the consensus engine? CD: Sure. More recently I have dove into the codebase a little bit more. That started with looking at Matt’s async ProcessNewBlock [work]( and playing around with that. Learning from that how do you make a change to the core engine of Bi...

Carl Dong’s presentation at Breaking Bitcoin 2019 on “Bitcoin Build System Security”: Intro Adam Jonas (AJ): Welcome to the Chaincode podcast Carl. Carl Dong (CD): Hello. AJ: You know we’ve been doing this podcast for a while now. How come you haven’t been on the show yet? CD: We’ve been at h...

Mark Erhardt: 00:00:00 Just to throw out a few numbers there, non-SegWit inputs cost almost 300 bytes, and native SegWit inputs cost slightly more than 100 bytes. There's almost a reduction by two-thirds in fees if you switch from non-SegWit to native SegWit. Introduction Caralie Chrisco: 00:00:...

Nadav Kohen: 00:00:00 Right now in the Lightning Network, if I were to make a payment every single hop along that route, they would know that they're on the same route, because every single HTLC uses the same hash. It's a bad privacy leak. It's actually a much worse privacy leak now that we have mu...

# Intro Adam Jonas (AJ): Welcome Matt Matt Corallo (MC): Hi John Newbery (JN): Hi Matt AJ: Today we are going to do a little bit of a “This is your life Bitcoin”. MC: I am not dead yet. AJ: You have a lot of contributions over the years so there is lots to talk about but we’ll start with three...

Introduction John Newbery: 00:00:00 If we go back in time to version 0.1, all that was stored was the blockchain and I think a marker saying whether that coin was spent or not. I mean that's okay for your first version but it doesn't really scale and it's bad performance because every time you wan...

Next in the studio, we caught James O'Beirne, who until recently was a co-worker of ours at Chaincode. We talked to James about his experience at the Chaincode residency, his most recent project AssumeUTXO and how he champions and effects change in Bitcoin Core.

CTV BIP review workshop transcript: Intro Jonas: Welcome to the podcast Jeremy. Jeremy: Thanks for having me on. Jonas: I think to start us off tell us a bit about your background, how you got into Bitcoin and we'll take it from there. Jeremy: I first heard about Bitcoin in 2011. I was intern...

Part 2: Jonas: Welcome to the podcast John: Hi Pieter Pieter: Hello John and Jonas John: Thank you for being the first guest on our podcast. Jonas: So far the most important guest we’ve had. Pieter: That’s an amazing honor. Thank you so much for having me. John: We’re here to talk about Bitc...

Jonas: We are gonna pick up where we left off in episode 1 with a discussion of lessons learned from the 0.8 consensus failure. We then go on to cover `libsecp` and Pieter's thoughts about Bitcoin in 2020. We hope you enjoy this as much as we did. John: Ok I have a bunch of questions from that. One...