Hi Insiders. This is Tuma, open-source reporter from the Insider Edition.
This week’s update features the official merge in the BOLTs repository of the specifications for creating simple taproot channels, providing improved privacy, security, and flexibility of the Lightning Network.
We also cover the first stable release of Coco, an easy-to-use, modular, TypeScript-first toolkit for building Cashu wallets and applications, and the different releases of Stratum V2 for the core protocol, applications, and mining dashboard.
We finally propose some more interesting news. Notably, we discuss the biggest player in the mining industry joining the Stratum V2 Working Group, and a new challenge by Alloc Init to break their new witness encryption scheme.
Highlights from the bitcoin developer ecosystem
I spent 10+ hours in open-source developer calls in the Bitcoin ecosystem last week. Here is what caught my eye:
PR995 for simple taproot channels has been finally merged.
During the monthly call, on Monday 4th, Lightning Network developers discussed PR995, an extension bolt to allow for simple taproot channels. The proposal by developer Olaoluwa Osuntokun has been finally merged after some years of work.
PR995 introduces specifications to enable support for taproot, allowing developers to improve the privacy, security, and flexibility of the system. In particular, the new taproot channels use MuSig2 key aggregation to combine two keys into one, with the multisig output becoming a single P2TR key, and tapscript trees capabilities.
The PR also defines the concept of “extension BOLT”, a standalone document that describes how to modify an existing “base” BOLT to avoid littering the main specification, improving readability and making reviewing easier. In particular, this PR extends capabilities for BOLT 2, BOLT 3 and BOLT 5.
Coco, a modular, TypeScript-first toolkit for building Cashu wallets and applications, has finally released its first stable version.
During the monthly call, on Thursday 7th, Cashu developers announced that the first stable release, v1.0.0, of Coco had been released.
Coco aims to simplify the development of Cashu-related wallets and applications, providing developers with a “batteries-included” toolkit. According to its main developer, Egge, Coco “provides a storage-agnostic core for wallet logic, proof management, mint sync, quote handling, subscriptions, operation recovery, and typed events”.
Coco is not stopping at the first release, but it is already planning a second one for the end of the month, integrating the latest breaking changes from the library it is built on, cashu-ts.
v1.9.0 of Stratum V2 protocol, v0.4.0 of the applications, and v0.2.0 of the mining dashboard have been recently published.
During the weekly call, on Tuesday 5th, Stratum V2 developers discussed the new upcoming releases of the different libraries. The protocol crates were released on the same day, while the ones for applications and UI were published the day after.
The main highlight for v1.9.0 is the introduction of a new
ExtranonceManagermodule, a reusable allocator for extranonce prefixes for both standard and extended channels. v0.4.0 brings the latest updates from the protocol to the applications and provides support for Bitcoin Core v31. v0.2.0 improves the mining dashboard based on the feedback from the early adopters.Stratum V2 developers are also working on a new bindings library, sv2-uniffi, to bring the reference implementation to other languages, starting from Python and C++.
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
New pools are joining the Stratum V2 Working Group: Stratum V2 maintainers recently announced that some of the biggest pools in the mining industry had joined the SV2 Working Group, a specialized body that aims to steward the initiative and advance the standard across the industry. The founding entities, Braiins and Spiral, are now leading the effort towards a more efficient, private, secure, and decentralized mining alongside AntPool, Block, Foundry, Mara, SpiderPool, and DMND.
Breaking PIPEs: Alloc Init, a cryptography-focused research group, launched a new challenge to invite researchers and developers to break their new witness encryption scheme, which is the base for the new Bitcoin PIPEs v2.
Looking for an opportunity to join up with some bitcoin devs in person? Join us in Vienna this May 27- 28 to talk about Austrian Economics!