Socratic Seminar 50

March 11, 2026

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Event Time: March 11, 2026 at 06:00 PM EDT

We will start with introductions, cover some basic ground rules, and then jump into technical discussions. Topics include aspects of the Bitcoin protocol, new research developments, recent news, and software developments.

Please note the meeting location is in room APEX 1 at 100 New Millennium Way, Durham, NC 27709, USA.

Announcements

• no pictures or recordings
• follow the chatham house rule
  • discuss what was said, not who said it
• don't be a jerk
• thank you to our sponsor Fidelity Investments
• introductions

Bitcoin Core

• P2MR output type discussion
  • best way to view the BIP
• The limitations of cryptographic agility in Bitcoin
• Introducing UltrafastSecp256k1: A Multi-Architecture Exploration of Secp256k1 Optimizations
• The future of the Bitcoin Core GUI
• New gui-qml contributor
• Using AI tooling for code review

Mining

• Heatpunk summit talks are up on youtube
• Hashpool is back up
  • Haspool v0.1.1 tag
• BZM2 in mujina
• Tether Mining SDK
• FIBRE resurrected
• Parasite pool mines their first block
• [BIP Draft] 24 bits for nVersion nonce space instead of 16

Covenants

• Binohash: Transaction Introspection Without Softforks

Layer 2

• Bitcoin PIPEs v2

Ecash

• Proof of Liabilities Implementation
  • Impl & Usage Guide
  • NUT spec
  • Nutshell impl

Misc

• First block signaling BIP110
  • Bip110 signal tracking
• Nested MuSig2
• Sigbash v2 announced
• Using openclaw to gain super powers

PRs

• Allow recovery of MtGox stolen funds (79,956 BTC)
• BIP 324, 434: Specify p2p v2 one-byte identifier for FEATURE message
• BIP 446: OP_TEMPLATEHASH and BIP Draft: TH+CSFS+IK Bundle
• BIP Proposal: Ordinals (closed)
• p2p: Allow block downloads from peers without snapshot block after assumeutxo validation
• wallet: fix removeprunedfunds bug with conflicting transactions
• mining, ipc: omit dummy extraNonce from coinbase
• mining: Break compatibility with existing IPC mining clients
• mining: add cooldown to createNewBlock() immediately after IBD
• Add a "tx output spender" index
• rpc,net: Add private broadcast RPC
• rpc: add coinbase_tx field to getblock
• build: Embedded ASMap [3/3]: Build binary dump header file
• BIP54 "Consensus Cleanup" implementation
• btcec/schnorr/musig2: add nested MuSig2 support for recursive cosigner trees
• hashes: add SHA256 ARM hardware acceleration