Last week in bitcoin (Oct 6 - 12)
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:
Marmot Protocol was recently released to the public, expanding the NIP-EE Nostr specification for secure messaging.
During the monthly call, lead developer Jeff Gardner announced the official launch of the Marmot Protocol, a series of specifications for secure and decentralized messaging groups based on the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol and Nostr.
The goal of this protocol is to expand the former Nostr specification, NIP-EE, to accommodate for more complex usage, such as encrypted media, multi-device support, and advanced group management. Having a dedicated blueprint allows to create new feature-related specifications and provide comprehensive documentation for straightforward implementation and integration.
Alongside Marmot, developers launched the reference implementation for the messaging protocol, the Marmot Development Kit (MDK). This library, written in Rust, provides all the functionalities according to the Marmot specifications. Developers are also working on a TypeScript implementation, marmot-ts, which is still in early development.
PR1064 introduces a Tor-backed HTTP transport implementation for CDK leveraging the Arti client.
During the weekly call, CDK developers announced the merging of PR1064. This PR enables wallets and mints to issue HTTP and HTTPS requests over Tor to improve users’ privacy.
This features leverages the arti client from Tor Project, a complete rewrite of the older Tor codebase, written in C. This project is developed in Rust, which is considered to be more secure and flexible than C. Arti allows for an easy integration of the Tor protocol in Rust codebases, since it is designed to be modular and reusable.
What’s cool about the tech: Allowing wallets and mints to send requests over Tor allows for better privacy on the user side.
PR7793 aims to bring Versioned Storage Service (VSS) for backing up channel states in LDK Gateways in Fedimint.
During the weekly call, on Monday 6th, Fedimint developers discussed a PR to allow federations running an LDK-powered internal node to back-up their Lightning state on a VSS server, with fallback to local storage in case of issues. This PR, currently assigned to contributor Harsh Dev Pathak, is still a draft and discussion is ongoing on the best approach.
Versioned Storage Service (VSS) is an open-source project designed to offer a server-side cloud storage solution specifically tailored for non-custodial Lightning supporting mobile wallets. Currently maintained by LDK team, VSS provides a secure means to store and manage the essential state required for Lightning Network operations.
What’s cool about the tech: Lightning gateways provide routing services in and out of a Fedimint federation. Thanks to LDK, a federation can easily launch an internal Lightning node to be used as a gateway. Integrating VSS allows federation custodians to manage the node easily.