We will start with introductions, some basic ground rules, and jump into technical discussions. We will cover aspects of the bitcoin protocol, new research developments, recent news, and software developments.
Please note the meeting location at 4801 Glenwood Ave suite 200 in Raleigh, right above Fifth Third Bank.
Join us for the first part of our three-part series on SegWit, also known as segregated witness. To gain a clear understanding of Taproot, it’s essential to comprehend the fundamentals of SegWit.
In this first part, we’ll delve into the necessary background material that led to SegWit. The following two parts will focus more on the technical aspects of SegWit version 1 and version 2. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to enhance your knowledge of Bitcoin’s underlying technologies!
Very exciting news for covenant fans! James O’Beirne has released a new update to his OP_VAULT proposal that incorporates techniques from TLUV, making the protocol more flexible and simpler to use. Additionally, O’Beirne proposes including OP_CTV as a first-class citizen in this proposal.
If you’re interested in the technical details, you can read the full BIP on O’Beirne’s Github page. Alternatively, check out this fantastic Twitter thread by O’Beirne for a quick summary. Don’t miss out on the latest developments in Bitcoin’s covenants!
Bitcoin Core developer Josie and Bitcoin Sorcerer Ruben Somsen have announced a proposed BIP for Silent Payments, which is a way to privately and securely send bitcoin to a publicly announced address. The proposal offers to solve many of the gaps and privacy footguns inherent in BIP47 Reusable Payment Codes proposal. There’s no free lunch, though. The payment recipient must scan every bitcoin transaction to identify incoming payments. This BIP proposal also shipped with a working implementation in bitcoin core!
Calle has released a Proof of Liabilities proposal for ecash mints. It is a trustless way to prove that a mint has not issued more ecash tokens than it has in on-chain bitcoin. The proposal relies on the need for an ecash mint to periodically rotate the private key it uses to create new ecash tokens. Each key rotation period is called an “epoch” and Calle describes a “periodic bank run” where users of the mint can compare their burned ecash tokens against a list that the mint publishes for all past epochs on a regular schedule.
Calle has stated on twitter that he intends to develop this protocol for use in Cashu.
ZeroSync is a new project that aims to bring zero knowledge proofs to bitcoin. Zerosync promises to enable extremely fast full node syncing with three new state proofs: headers chain, consensus rules (except witness data), and the full consensus rules (including witness data). They also plan to build a developer toolkit to enable a ton of new scaling and privacy improvements to many areas of bitcoin, including lightning. Zerosync has received sponsorship from StarkWare Industries, a software company building Ethereum ZK rollup system StarkNet. Bitcoin stands to benefit a great deal thanks to the cutting edge research performed on Ethereum.
