Crypto && Coffee - CipherTrace

Technology Recap: Bitcoin: Blockstream shares a new update to the Jade Bitcoin hardware wallet which can be used fully air-gapped for all functionality. CoinTelegraph gives a breakdown on the technical discussions that took place at Advancing Bitcoin last week in London. Ethereum: ETH Denver 2023 took place last week where teams focused on the upcoming Shanghai/Capella upgrade and…

Technology Recap: Bitcoin: Robert Dickinson posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list to inquire about whether a size limit should be imposed to discourage such data storage as ordinals.  Ordinals are becoming the controversial topic lately within the Bitcoin world around writing inscriptions – inscribed satoshis with arbitrary content, into transactions to create bitcoin-native digital artifacts.  Carla Kirk-Cohen and Clara…

Breaking News: South Korean news agency Yonhap announced that the offices of Bithumb were raided on Thursday, January 26, 2023 as part of an investigation into the price manipulation of an unidentified coin listed on the South Korean crypto exchange. Bithumb Chairman Kang Jong-Hyun and two other executives – including his younger sister, Kang Ji-Yeon, the CEO…

Technology Recap: Bitcoin: Peter Todd announced a patch on top of Bitcoin Core v24.0.1 that sets a full RBF service bit when it advertises its network address to other nodes. This RBF (Replace-by-Fee) service bit only works if the node its advertising too is also enabled with mempoolfullrbf. Jack Dorsey is apparently working on integrating a Lightning option…

Technology Recap: Bitcoin: John Law posted to the Lightning-Dev mailing list a description of a protocol optimized for creating channel factories. These would allow multiple users to trustlessly open multiple channels between pairs of users with only a single transaction on-chain. Bitcoin Core v24.0.1 is a new major release with various new features including an option to…

Technology Recap: Bitcoin: Bitcoin Core merged support for a mempoolfullrbf configuration option which defaults to the existing behavior of only allowing RBF (Replace-by-Fee) replacement of transactions containing the BIP-125 signal.  Sparrow Wallet v1.7.0 has been released with Linux aarch64 support, implementation of Sparrow Terminal, cancel transaction operations for RBF, Jade support and more!  Lightning Labs releases lnd v0.15.4-beta which aims to solve the syncing issue…

Technology Recap: Bitcoin: A fix for btcd’s wire parsing library was pushed to help fix the issue affecting a large number of Lightning network nodes. The fix was packaged into a hotfix release for LND.  River Financial announces RLS: River Lightning Services. RLS is a Lightning gateway for developers to enable Lightning network deposits and withdrawals utilizing a simple API without running any…

Technology Recap: Bitcoin: Lightning Labs announces the initial code for Taro, a new protocol to issue and transfer assets on the Bitcoin and Lightning network.  Core developer, Gloria Zhao, posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a proposal to allow transactions to opt-in to a modified set of transaction relay policies. This would aid both layer-2 and contract-based protocols.  Bitcoin…

Technology Recap: Bitcoin: Suhas Daftuar releases a PR that aims to reduce the bandwidth needed during initial header syncs when a block is found. This will improve synchronization of the blockchain with peers during the Initial Block Download (IBD) and more.  Lightning Dev Kit, LDK, has published v0.0.111 which includes support for relaying onion messages! Onion messages are messages…

Technology Recap: Bitcoin: Several wallet developers including ColdCard and Sparrow Wallet have been in talks with developer Ali Sherief regarding a BIP that encompasses a single message signing algorithm used for P2WPKH and other output types. Core developers have been discussing use cases and designs around on-chain transactions that “burn” bitcoins in small increments as a proof of resource…