Last Week in Bitcoin (July 28 - August 3)
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:
Blockstream publicly launched Simplicity, a new Turing-incomplete scripting language for smart contract development on the Liquid Network.
Simplicity is a typed, combinator-based, functional language that does not implement unbounded loops, recursion or implicit global variables. These are high-risk components that have historically been the major causes of bugs and exploits in other scripting languages.
Simplicity comes with a frontend high-level language, SimplicityHL, that makes it easier for developers to express UTXOs spending conditions. This language is similar to Rust, thus allowing even easier usage from developers.
What’s cool about the tech: Simplicity helps developers build more flexible applications. Improved developer flexibility is one of the main reasons so many developers support adding new opcodes, such as OP_CAT or OP_CTV+OP_CSFS. The Simplicity language could enable similar primitives that these proposed opcodes provide. Potential use cases are Programmable Vaults, Auditable DEXs and Bitcoin-native Smart Banks. If you want to dive deeper into Simplicity, check out our interview with Blockstream’s Russell O'Connor.
Fedimint v0.8.0 “Fedimint In-A-Box” has been released with the major improvement of providing easy one-click deployment solution.
During the Fedimint weekly developers call, it was announced that the final adjustments for the v0.8.0 release were completed and that the newer version was ready to be shipped. This version brings a variety of new features, such as recurring payment infrastructure and lower default Lightning v2 gateway fees.
Most notably, this release allows simple self-hosting of a Fedimint federation. In fact, thanks to the integration with iroh, a library for building p2p connections between devices, it was possible to create a package for StartOS, which allows for simple one-click deployment. A package for Umbrel is coming soon.
What’s cool about the tech: There’s a lot of overhead when hosting a Fedimint federation, so the improvements made to lessen this burden will go a long way in driving adoption for the technology.
NUT-XX is proposing a new specification to allow for batched minting of multiple mint quotes within the same event.
During the Cashu monthly call, developers presented a new draft of a specification to allow for multiple minting of several mint quotes. A minting operation cannot be performed unless the user is online and able to provide a valid signature.
If a user doesn’t go online for a long time, mint quotes can accumulate and the process of minting would require a long time to be performed. Moreover, several tokens would be created, possibly with small amounts (i.e. receiving multiple zaps).
This specification introduces the concept of batched minting. The user would be able not only to mint multiple quotes with only one event, but even decide the number and amount of tokens to be minted.
The LSP plugin in the latest release of BTCPay Server v2.2.0 is now live and allows users to get inbound liquidity for receiving payments.
The BTCPay Server plugin developed by MegalithicBTC is based on LSPS1 standard BLIP-51, which provides a standardize API for wallets to purchase a channel directly from a Lightning Service Provider.
As of today, there are already three LSPs that allow users to purchase inbound liquidity. In addition, any LSP which complies with the BLIP-51 standard can add itself to the list and start providing liquidity to users.
What’s cool about the tech: Inbound liquidity is fundamental to be able to receive payments on the Lightning Network. Creating an effortless workflow to purchase it allows merchants to always be able to get paid in a non-custodial way.