Last Week in Bitcoin (July 21 - 27)
Highlights from the bitcoin developer ecosystem
Hi Insiders. This is Tuma, open source reporter from the Insider Edition. I spent 10+ hours in open-source developer calls in the Bitcoin ecosystem last week. Here is what caught my eye:
Developer elsirion created the first test apk for fedimint-app through a new CI pipeline on GitHub.
Fedimint App is a client application for the Fedimint protocol, written in Flutter and Rust.
By merging PR121, elsirion enables the automatic creation of the first apk file for the Fedimint App. The created workflow aims at automating dependency installation, source build, and apk release on GitHub for higher reproducibility and efficiency.
This is still labeled as a pre-release, and it is still not working on mainnet, but it’s a first step towards a first official release of the app, which still lacks an official name.
PR145 on the Stratum V2 specifications repository, improving Job Declaration Protocol description, was merged by plebhash.
The Job Declaration Protocol is one of the key features of the new Stratum V2 protocol. It is used to coordinate the creation of custom jobs by individual miners, thus increasing decentralization.
This PR added an explainer on the Job Declaration Client to emphasize that a miner is always able to continue mining on the preferred template since the protocol allows them to automatically switch pools. This is useful in a case where the pool rejects custom jobs which were already acknowledged as valid.
What’s cool about the tech: This protocol allows individual miners to choose their favorite template and stick to it without loosing mining shares, even if a dishonest pool rejects it.
Evento.so is a new event management platform that leverages the Lightning Network through the Alby Hub infrastructure.
During the Alby Community Call, Brianna showcased the Evento platform, and HRF-sponsored project that aims at competing with legacy platforms which charge high prices to organizers and at bypassing the traditional financial system by integrating p2p payments.
Brianna also provided some insights on the possible new developments that the platform wants to build, such as a custom ticketing infrastructure to avoid relying on other 3rd party systems that usually keep more than 10% of the price ticket.
Evento is hosting Hack4Freedom, a hackathon designed for Nigerian women that provides mentorship for female developers to build on freedom tech, such as Bitcoin, LN and Nostr.
The Insider Edition’s Editor-in-Chief, Janusz, attended PlebFi — a bitcoin conference focused on metaprotocols. His update:
PlebFi was a two-day event. The first day consisted of a series of metaprotocol-adjacent talks that were followed by a 24-hour hackathon.
The focus of the talks was on various modules that help devs hack on metaprotocols. Loads of different approaches were introduced, and it was clear that this subculture in bitcoin is capturing the attention of a growing number of devs.
My favorite talk covered miner incentives and mempool policy. The perspective is highly profit driven (rational) and introduced a number of trends, such as the growing sub 1 sat per vbyte adoption. While discussions rage on about how people should use bitcoin, we have to remember that the majority of those building the blocks will take whatever fee revenue they can get.
What’s on my radar for this week?
PDK Developer Call: Monday 28th — 5PM UTC
Lightning Specification Call: Monday 28th — 8PM UTC
Cashu Monthly Call: Thursday 31st — 3PM UTC