Silent Payments finally made some noise - This Week in Bitcoin Core #59

This week Silent Payments has some motion...

Sep 25, 2026

Hello 👋 folks, I’m Kevkevin. I’m an open-source developer and reporter for Insider Edition. Last week I reviewed several pull requests from the Bitcoin Core repo. The most-reviewed merge this week is silent payments, and the PR still doesn't open a wallet. BIP352 take 2 is on master as protocol code: public keys, private keys, and the BIP test vectors as unit tests. Receiver labels are optional in the BIP, so they stay out. The wallet scan is a different pull request.

BIP352 is the silent-payment construction. The sender tweaks the receiver’s spend key with a shared secret from the sender’s input keys and the receiver’s scan key, and pays to that one-time output. The receiver recomputes the same tweak from the input public keys. #35301 keeps that logic off the wallet and off transaction objects, so the tests do not need a wallet backend. It replaces #28122 and is built on libsecp256k1 #1765. The tracking issue is #28536. Receiving is still draft #32966.

The next merge by review activity is listrawtransactions. listtransactions only emits transactions with an economic category, so a consolidation or a self-transfer never appears. The new RPC lists every wallet transaction once, with the net balance change and the fee when this wallet funded it.

Thursday’s #bitcoin-core-dev meeting had three topics: dergoegge is leaving full-time fuzzing work, the QML GUI group is still in design and staging, and the v32.0rc2 binaries are up.

Merged PR’s

Every week, several changes are officially added to Bitcoin Core. This week, multiple changes were merged. Here are some I found interesting this week.

Silent Payments: Implement bip352 (take 2) by Eunovo
Oghenovo Usiwoma (Eunovo) merged the second attempt at BIP352. The first attempt was #28122. This one is based on secp256k1 #1765 and tracked in #28536.
The PR is only the BIP. It takes public and private keys directly, instead of a wallet backend and transactions, and the BIP test vectors are unit tests. Labels, which let one scan key from multiple addresses, are deferred. Nothing here wires silent payments into CWallet. That receiving work is still #32966, and it is a draft.
wallet, rpc: Add listrawtransactions RPC by pablomartin4btc
listtransactions returns sends to an external address and receives from outside the wallet. A consolidation or a self-transfer has no external party, so it is invisible. listrawtransactions returns every transaction the wallet knows about, each one once. The entry carries the net wallet balance change (amount) and, when this wallet funded the transaction, the fee. count and skip match listtransactions. Closes #34632.
#35009, by alfonsoromanz, was closed so this could be its own RPC, which is what achow101 asked for. The PR itself lists the follow-ups: a filter (all / received / sent / self) once the per-tx meaning is agreed, and a cleanup of TransactionDescriptionString() fields such as replaced_by_txid and parent_descs that still refer to category.

There are always changes being updated and reviewed in real-time. Here are some notable PR’s that are still up and looking for reviews.

fees: return block_policy fee rate estimate when mempool_policy is not ready by ismaelsadeeq
The mempool fee estimator cannot always answer. Right after startup or a re-sync it has not tracked enough blocks. An empty or sparse mempool cannot fill the requested percentile. Recent blocks can cover too little of what was in the mempool. The mempool can still be loading. For a sparse mempool, Core used to return the fee floor (the higher of the minimum relay fee and the mempool minimum fee). That can sit far under the feerate those missing transactions would have implied.
This PR makes the mempool estimator return an error instead of flooring an unfilled percentile. The combined estimatesmartfee path starts from the block policy estimate and only lowers it when a mempool estimate exists. An error is returned only when block policy itself is unavailable. Calling estimatesmartfee with fee_rate_estimator=mempool_policy still returns the failure. The first commit renames the default mode from none to auto.
If the mempool fails to load (persistence off, or a missing or corrupt mempool.dat), init notifies the estimator and clears its mined-block window. Otherwise that window would still describe a mempool the node no longer has. Clearing it makes the estimator report insufficient data until the window refills, and the combined estimate uses block policy in the meantime.
The mempool estimator now returns an error instead of flooring an unfilled percentile, so an empty/sparse mempool is treated like any other not-ready state rather than potentially silently underestimating.

IRC meeting notes

Every week on Thursday, there is an IRC meeting. Here are some short notes from that meeting.

𝗳𝗷𝗮𝗵𝗿: There is one pre-proposed meeting topic this week. Any last minute ones to add?
𝗳𝗷𝗮𝗵𝗿: Let's start with the WGs...

𝗳𝗷𝗮𝗵𝗿: #topic Fuzzing WG Update (dergoegge, marcofleon)
𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗼𝗲𝗴𝗴𝗲: After this week I won't be contributing here full time anymore (maybe in my spare time, but let's see), as I've accepted a job elsewhere
𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗼𝗲𝗴𝗴𝗲: Most of my projects/work will be taken over by Brink's Marco and Eugene, so please direct any questions or review requests that you'd have for me towards them
𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗼𝗲𝗴𝗴𝗲: I'll open PRs to remove myself as a security contact by the end of this week
𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗼𝗲𝗴𝗴𝗲: It's been really great working with you all!
𝗳𝗷𝗮𝗵𝗿: :/ sad
𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗰𝗹-𝗮𝗿𝗸: :(
𝘁𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗿𝗠𝗮𝗳𝗶𝗮: dergoegge: very sad. only the best
𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗲𝘀-𝘃: :( thanks for all your contributions. this project is in a much safer place because of it. have fun on the next thing!
𝗱𝘇𝘅𝘇𝗴: Thanks for all your work on fuzzing!
𝗳𝗷𝗮𝗵𝗿: I hope to still see you around somehow if possible. All the best! Is there still some update on the WG? I guess not since marcofleon isn't here...
𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗼𝗲𝗴𝗴𝗲: No update otherwise
𝗷𝗮𝗻𝗯𝟴𝟰: Thanks for you work, sad to see you leave. Good luck on the new job
𝗳𝗷𝗮𝗵𝗿: I hope the next one is a better update ;)

𝗳𝗷𝗮𝗵𝗿: #topic QML GUI WG Update (johnny9dev)
𝗰𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗹𝗱𝘀: :(
𝗷𝗼𝗵𝗻𝗻𝘆𝟵𝗱𝗲𝘃: Nothing too significant this week. We're working through design, issues, and staging
𝗰𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗹𝗱𝘀: dergoegge: Thank you for all of your hard work, dergoegge!
𝗷𝗼𝗵𝗻𝗻𝘆𝟵𝗱𝗲𝘃: That's all for qml
𝗳𝗷𝗮𝗵𝗿: brunoerg teased a yuge update last week but I guess he couldn't make it...
𝗳𝗷𝗮𝗵𝗿: maybe later, moving on

𝗳𝗷𝗮𝗵𝗿: #topic 32.0 release candidate testing (sedited)
𝘀𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱: yes, the 32.0rc2 binaries are now available for testing.
𝘀𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱: the umbrella issue over here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/36315 links to both the proposed release notes and the testing guide. If you find something, do use this for tracking.
𝗳𝗷𝗮𝗵𝗿: sedited: that's it on that topic right?
𝗹𝟬𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗰: thanks for your work dergoegge
𝘀𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱: we've picked up a few pull more requests in the milestone for backporting https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/milestone/84
𝘀𝗶𝗽𝗮: dergoegge: not a surprise, but still sad to see you go
𝗳𝗷𝗮𝗵𝗿: l0rinc: you still want to give an update?
𝘀𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱: please do test, we've hadn't had a release note this long in a while!
𝘀𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱: that's all.
𝗹𝟬𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗰: fjahr: no, thanks
𝗳𝗷𝗮𝗵𝗿: Anything else to discuss?
𝗳𝗷𝗮𝗵𝗿: #endmeetingRead here for the full meeting

Read the full meeting

Releases

v32.0rc2 was tagged 2026-09-18 by sedited

Thank you for reading. Be sure to tune in again next week for your updates on Bitcoin Core!

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