Hi Insiders. This is Tuma, open-source reporter from the Insider Edition.
In this week update we feature the most interesting things happened during Bitcoin++ Consensus Edition in Toronto, where devs met to discuss new consensus proposals and what are the best way forward for Bitcoin.
We also cover some other interesting news from the Bitcoin ecosystem. Notably, a PR was opened in Bitcoin Core to bring BIP54 (Consensus Cleanup) into the protocol, Lightning Labs launched a third Ark implementation, and silent payments being integrated in libsecp256k1.
Highlights from Bitcoin++ — Consensus Edition
I spent last week at Bitcoin++ Consensus Edition in Toronto. The first day of talks will be live-streamed starting from Thursday, July 30th, at 5PM UTC.
Here is what caught my eye:
Matthew Vuk from Second kicked-off the conference by providing an historical overview on all the soft forks that have ever happened in Bitcoin.
Fabian Jahr gave a talk about his recent proposal to bring Cross-input Signature Aggregation (CISA) to Bitcoin. The BIPs triplet is composed by BIP458 for half-aggregation, BIP459 for full-aggregation, and BIP460 (not yet assigned, but reserved for this goal) for the actual CISA sofr fork.
Julian Moik provided a panoramic on the Great Script Restoration proposal, which aims to make Bitcoin programmable money again.
Pablo Greco, Director of Engineering at Blockstream, highlighted the differences in consensus between Bitcoin and the Liquid sidechain.
Michael Hassard, one of Roman Sterlingov’s trial lawyers, talked about his client’s story, the ongoing process, and the next steps to make Roman a free man again.
Russel O’Connor explained what formal verification is, and how he applied it to one of the modules of tone of he cryptographic library used in Bitcoin, libsecp256k1.
Tadge Dryja gave a talk on the possible techniques that could be used to migrate exposed coins to new quantum-safe addresses, in case elliptic curve gets broken in the future.
BDK contributor Thunderbiscuit discussed Compact Block Filters, how they impact users, and how wallet developers could leverage them in their applications.
Bitcoin researcher Conduition explained to the audience what isogeny signatures are and why are they important for a post-quantum future. All through mathematics and memes.
Peter Todd discussed his ideas on tail emission and demurrage, a way to keep Bitcoin secure after the last sat gets mined.
Isabel Foxen Duke moderated a panel with Tadge Deyja, Conduition, and Nadav Kohen on the different proposals currently under research to make Bitcoin quantum secure.
Calvin Kim, btcd contributor, gave a talk on what the developments of an alternative Bitcoin client looks like.
Andrew Toth gave an overview on his recent work to make Initial Block Download (IBD) faster, an improvement that should be included in Bitcoin Core v32.
Matthew Vuk explained how the Ark round signing ceremony works.
Steven Roose, Second CEO, discussed what covenants are, how they work, and how we could achieve them using
OP_TEMPLATEHASHandOP_CHECKSIGFROMSTACK.Paul Sztorc told the audience about everything he is working on right now, from his future hard fork to all that he is building on top of it.
Chris Guida explained why he thinks that BIP110 is the best way forward for Bitcoin.
Tadge Dryja moderated the final panel with Chris Guida, Paul Sztorc, and Peter Todd on the different views and proposals they have for the future of Bitcoin. The final panel will be live today, Monday 27th, at 5PM UTC!
A BIPs Update
There was no newsworthy update in the last days in the BIP repository. We’ll provide new updates as soon as a new BIP gets published or gets assigned a number.
Other News from the Bitcoin World
Next step for BIP54: Antoine Poinsot announced that a new PR35793 on Bitcoin Core had been opened to bring BIP54, the Consensus Cleanup soft fork, to Bitcoin. The PR will only implement the soft forks, without the activation mechanism.
The 3rd Ark: Lightning Labs announced their answer to Lightning last mile problem, Wavelength. The new implementation is an Ark analog, and allows fast integration of Bitcoin payments in any application.
Silent payments <> libsecp256k1: The cryptographic functions needed for silent payments have been recently merged into the libsecp256k1 library through PR1765.
Looking for an opportunity to join up with some bitcoin devs in person? Join us in Berlin this October 1- 3 to talk about payments in Bitcoin!