Last Week in Bitcoin (July 14 - 20)
Highlights from the bitcoin developer ecosystem
Hi Insiders. This is Tuma, open source reporter from the Insider Edition. I spent 10+ hours in open developer calls in the Bitcoin open source ecosystem this week. Here is what caught my eye:
bitcoin++ released the talks schedule and speaker lineup for their privacy edition event in Riga, Latvia this August 7+8.
TollGate, WhiteNoise, Spiral, eltor, Brink, 2140 are among the open source projects and organizations that are speaking and presenting at the conference. See the full list here.
Insider contributor niftynei interviewed Arjen of TollGate at the Oslo Freedom Forum this past May. The TollGate team will be at the event running a workshop on how to run your own e-cash WiFi gate.
Use code INSIDER to get 21% off a ticket (when paying with bitcoin)
BDK developer thunderbiscuit, created a new Discord server, Bitcoin Uniffi Bindings, to discuss new developments and tackle common issues related to languages bindings. Many Bitcoin projects developed in Rust, such as Bitcoin Development Kit, Stratum V2 and Payjoin Dev Kit, are creating bindings using the same technology, Uniffi.
Bindings are wrapper libraries that are used to bridge code between different programming languages. Bindings allow a library written in a one language to be used in a codebase developed in another one.
Uniffi-rs is a multi-language bindings generator for Rust developed by Mozilla and supports different programming languages natively, such as Swift, Kotlin, Python and Ruby, and some others through 3rd party libraries, such as JavaScript and Dart.
BDK uses Uniffi to support cross compilation to the JVM, Android, Swift, and python.
What’s cool about the tech: The development of bindings allows the re-usage of the same codebase in many different languages, without the need to rewrite the same code dozens of times.
The Quantum Bitcoin Summit, organized by Presidio Bitcoin, took place in San Francisco Bay Area on July 17-18th. This event was the first technical summit centered on the intersection of quantum computing and Bitcoin.
For two days, the Bitcoin-centric co-working space hosted leading experts in quantum computing and Bitcoin to discuss the risks that Crypto Relevant Quantum Computers (CRQC) could pose to the Bitcoin protocol. Could a sufficiently capable quantum computer break bitcoin’s cryptographic signatures and steal funds?
Discussion centered on possible countermeasures that may be adopted and on the timeline needed for the Bitcoin protocol to adapt. Rijndael dropped a great thread summarizing the event’s content.
Watch the livestreams for both for Day 1 and Day 2 on the Presidio x.com account. I suggest watching “Quantum’s Potential Impact on Bitcoin” from Clara Shikhelman (Head of Research at Chaincode Labs) for a clear explaination on which could be the real impact of CRQCs on Bitcoin and the debate “What To Do With Quantum-Vulnerable Bitcoins?” between Jameson Lopp (Co-founder & Chief Security Officer of Casa), Mike Casey (Director of Engineering at MARA) and Hunter Beast (Author of BIP360) on the different views on how to deal with coins on vulnerable addresses.
What’s cool about the tech: CRQCs may be seen as just FUD as of today. However, it is important to start assessing the possible scenarios that could threaten Bitcoin as we know it today.
Liana Wallet and the Payjoin Dev Kit teams are working together to improve privacy on Liana’s tiered timelock wallets.
They developed a proof-of-concept during the MIT Bitcoin Expo Hackathon in April, and have been working together since then. The project aims to improve privacy on the timelock refresh transactions in Liana’s inheritance policies.
Liana’s wallet timelocks need to be refreshed to prevent unintentional activation of the inheritance policy. To do so, timelocked coins need to be periodically spent, refreshing the timelock. However, these refresh transactions leave a clear on-chain footprint that strongly reduces user’s privacy.
What’s cool about the tech: The integration with Payjoin can help break on-chain heuristics on the timelocked coins, thus benefiting current and future Bitcoin users.
RGB protocol consensus layer has finally been declared production-ready by the LNP/BP standard association
The latest release, v0.12.0, of RGB, acronym for Really Good Bitcoin, allows contract issuers and developers to create smart contracts, such as stablecoins or tokenized stocks, on both testnet and the Bitcoin mainnet.
According to LNP/BP standard association, one of the main goals of this release was to increase simplicity in the protocol usage. This was done by a huge reduction of the codebase (4x reduction in code size), improvement in payments and increases in performances.
What’s cool about the tech: RGB’s smart contracts signficantly increase the scripting capabilities of Bitcoin, without requiring modifications to the Bitcoin protocol itself, thanks to client-side validation.
What’s on my radar for this week?
LDK Dev Sync-up Call: Monday 21th — 5PM UTC
Core Lightning Open Call: Monday 21th — 8PM UTC
Alby Community Call: Thursday 24th — 3PM UTC
Looking for an opportunity to join up with some bitcoin devs in person? Join us in Riga this August 7+8 to talk about privacy in bitcoin.
Thank you to NYDIG and HRF's Bitcoin Developer Fund, our Satoshi level sponsors for btc++ events in 2025.