Guess who received (& send back) 2 LARGE (!) mainnet #Bitcoin payments from @stefanwouldgo over the #LightningNetwork! 1st payment: 0.3679 BTC (345 parts minSplitSize: 10k sats) 2nd payment: 0.286 BTC (80 parts minSplitSize: 100k sats) Teamwork makes the dream work! 1/4

Congratulations to @erikdesmedt, @stevenroose3, and their team. Now, we can test the hypothesis that ark might outperform LN for #Bitcoin payments. If it will be rejected then we can still go for ark as a Channel factory. In either case: Exciting times for #Bitcoin payments!

Lot of confusion about how Ark and Lightning should interact to scale #bitcoin Luckily, @niftynei invited me to @btcplusplus Economics edition where I proposed Lightning powered by Ark (youtu.be/hqKQ4Rky3tY) instead of connecting Arks via Lightning. Feedback wellcome & enjoy!

Today is a sad day for the Lightning Network community as one of our very respected developers is moving on to new ventures. At the same time, I am delighted that I had the opportunity to collaborate with @rusty_twit and learn so much from him. In any case, I wish him well!

The sad truth many won't want to hear: #Bitcoin is far from being perfect. Yet, after my 3 months of sabbatical and seeing some stuff, I believe more than ever that Bitcoin is the best shot we currently have to fix some of the mess in the world...

The .@spark team deserves A LOT of credit getting Lightning into this spec 💪⚡🙏

BITCOIN RAILS #50: HISTORY OF SEGWIT & TAPROOT | with Pieter Wuille 🔗 YOUTUBE: youtu.be/QNrW4dUc_U4 A primary maintainer of Bitcoin Core from 2011-2022, Pieter Wuille is arguably the most influential developer in Bitcoin’s history since Satoshi himself. After receiving keys to the Bitcoin codebase from @gavinandresen, who was tasked with maintaining the codebase by Satoshi Nakamoto, Pieter went on to implement some of Bitcoin’s most dramatic and influential upgrades, including but not limited to: - Implementation of Bitcoin’s Taproot and Segwit upgrades - Implementation of libsecp256k Bitcoin’s unique encoding structure for the cryptography securing all Bitcoin public/private keys - The first import/export feature for Bitcoin private keys into Bitcoin (now Bitcoin Core) - Development of hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallets, enabling backups via a single seedphrase and paving the way for seedphrases themselves - DER signatures, Miniscript, and so much more A truly special episode of Bitcoin Rails, this is a rare long-form interview with one of the most important historical figures in the arc of Bitcoin’s development. Pieter and I walk through how Bitcoin consensus works in practice, the history of Bitcoin's most critical early developments, and the key role of his good friend, Greg Maxwell, nearly every step of the way. This episode of Bitcoin Rails is powered by: — Best In Slot (@bestinslotxyz) - the leading API for Ordinals and BRC-20 data aggregation and indexing. — Spark (@lightspark) - a statechains implementation advancing Bitcoin-powered payments. — Citrea (@citrea_xyz) - a leading Bitcoin rollup technology and BitVM alliance contributor. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 00:42 Early Days in Bitcoin 01:25 First Contributions to Bitcoin Core 04:38 Challenges and Innovations in Bitcoin Development 06:54 The Hal Finney Challenge 12:16 Bitcoin Core Contributors Back Then 14:18 The Creation of HD Wallets and Seed Phrases 17:47 Greg Maxwell Role and Relationship 21:00 Implementing Libsecp256k1 28:39 Why Did Satoshi Choose ECDSA 33:34 Addressing OpenSSL Issues 40:41 Why Pieter Wrote BIP 66 47:54 BIP 103 Proposal and Initial Reactions 49:57 SegWit Development and Implementation 01:05:39 Taproot's History, Details, and Benefits 01:11:09 Why Taproot Has No Hashed Addresses 01:16:55 Pieter's Thoughts on BitVM and other non-softfork dependent scaling solutions cc @robin_linus 01:18:27 Non-Soft Fork Scaling Solutions 01:23:03 Future Consensus Changes and Challenges 01:25:28 Bitcoin's Miner Centralization and Security Concerns (e.g. MEV) cc @TheBlueMatt 01:34:48 Miniscript: Simplifying Bitcoin Script? cc @Rob1Ham

Ask him if he regrets assigning blame for the MtGox fiasco to Bitcoins protocol, rather than what it really was: a terrible terrible exchange software bleeding left and right. Don't let him whitewash the history of MtGox: arxiv.org/abs/1403.6676

Mitigating The Impact Of The Quantum Freeze We examine ways of mitigating the impact of a quantum freeze, by allowing the frozen coins to potentially be recovered in a quantum safe way, such that almost every frozen coin is potentially recoverable bitmex.com/blog/Mitigating-T…

In case anyone else than @A_HODL_21m actually wondered HOW @voltage_cloud helped two companies (@SD_Markets & @KrakenInsto) to settle a large payment (valued at 1 million USD) utilizing the Lightning Network protocol and lightning software. Maybe "channels > routing" after all?

Could not agree more with @murchandamus. It is a shame that cyberbullies could not be stopped.

9 Minuten, warum ich zur Verbesserung des Gewalthilfegesetzes und zum Schutz von männlichen Opfern häuslicher Gewalt nach Karlsruhe vor das Verfassungsgericht ziehe! youtu.be/mKwqy5qUDZI Habe einen fast fertigen Schriftsatz und suche juristische Unterstützung. Thanks!

💯 to the best of my current understanding, ark is an excellent infrastructure for Lightning, not a replacement. Happy to see more and more people agreeing

René Pickhardt (@renepickhardt) joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #389: News ● A mathematical theory of payment channel networks (0:31) Changes to services and client software ● Electrum server for testing silent payments (30:04) ● BDK WASM library (33:28) Releases and release candidates ● Core Lightning 25.12.1 (35:14) ● LND 0.20.1-beta.rc1 (39:14) Notable code and documentation changes ● Bitcoin Core #32471 (40:57) ● Bitcoin Core #34146 (42:02) ● Core Lightning #8831 (45:00) ● LDK #4261 (45:35) ● LDK #4152 (46:24) ● LND #10488 (47:42) ● LND #10331 (48:43) ● Rust Bitcoin #5402 (49:06) ● BIPs #1820 (50:39) ● BOLTs #1306 (51:41) ● BLIPs #59 (53:05)

Bitcoin Optech newsletter #389 is here: - links to a paper on the study of payment channel networks - summarizes changes to services/client software including an Electrum server for testing silent payments and a BDK WASM library - Optech Newsletter #389 Podcast bitcoinops.org/en/newsletter…

FYI @glozow's twitter has been hacked. Do not click on any links posted by that account.

I saw turtles almost as big as humans! It is crazy and incredible what the underwater world has to offer! medium.com/@renepickhardt/lo… Enjoy reading my latest blog post and about my gratitude for such an amazing world which I still find surreal.

Again, I'm taking a sabbatical from lightning in Q1. I am trying to write a travel blog, so if it is interesting for you, the first two articles are online About hot tropical summer with ice bathing medium.com/@renepickhardt/wi… Bicycling in the rain forest medium.com/@renepickhardt/ri…

I'm extremely proud & happy! After 7 years in lightning and 2 years with @opensats I published A Mathematical Theory of Payment Channel Networks arxiv.org/abs/2601.04835 Also, my first solo authored paper though many people helped with great discussion & Feedback. See u in Q2!

After 7 years working nonstop on researching the Lightning Network, I'm taking a sabbatical this quarter to do some travel & free my mind If all goes well, expect a finalized version of the mathematical theory of payment channel networks to drop this week before I start my break

Excited to end the year with a technical report (: I elaborated why I disagree with the narrative that ARK should be used for payments. I rather think it is much more suited as an infrastructure layer between Bitcoin and Lightning. delvingbitcoin.org/t/ark-as-… Looking for debate!