BR022 - COLDCARD Q1 Announced, BTC Pay Server, Zeus, Keet goes mobile + MORE ft. Ben Carman & Odell
I’m joined by guests Matt Odell & BentheCarman to go through the list.
Housekeeping
00:01:04 Bountsr.org
00:01:15 Special secret announcement: Q1
Software Releases & Project Updates
00:13:54 Sparrow v1.7.2
Taproot wallets now supported on Bitcoin Core v24 or later using the new internal Cormorant library
Wallet fingerprints displayed as lifehashes on passphrase entry
Implemented BIP329 for importing and exporting wallet labels (Wallet Import and Export dialogs)
Tapsigner and Satscard support
Upgrade to HWI 2.2.0
00:15:03 BTC Pay Server
00:16:57 Blixt 0.6.3
Translated to Italian
Bug fixes
00:17:03 BISQ 1.9.9
This release is packed with improvements under the hood to improve resilience of the client and push further the decentralization of Bisq. Of course we have fixed lots of bugs across the board as well.
00:17:31 Keet Mobile Alpha is Now Live on iOS and Android
Launching with instant messages at first and will be adding video and calls in the next iteration.
00:19:17 Blockstream Jade 0.1.42
Register multisigs on Jade via QR
Wallet fingerprint displayed on Jade’s home screen
@nunchuk_io multisig QR support
00:19:30 Electrum Personal Server v0.2.4
Fixed crash caused by deprecated RPC in Bitcoin Core 23.0
Added signet support
00:20:11 Electrum 4.3.4
Various bug fixes.
Payserver and Trampoline improvement
00:21:00 Specter v1.14.5
This release contains Spectrum, a plugin for running Specter via an Electrum server instead of a Bitcoin Core node.
The plugin is currently in alpha
00:22:43 Liana 0.2rc1 (pre-release)
Multisig
Now supports descriptors with multiple keys both in the primary (non-timelocked) spending path and the recovery (timelocked) path.
GUI-specific:
You can now import and update Spend transaction drafts as PSBTs to collaboratively create and sign transactions.
When creating a new descriptor you can now set an alias for each key. Those will be displayed when inspecting a transaction’s signatories.
Amounts are now displayed with the sats in bold for better redability.
00:23:51 Zeus v0.7.2
POS for Square Terminals
Payment Settings: allow the user to change their default fee limit
Receive via NFC (ie. Boltcards)
LNURL-auth support for LNDHub
Add ability to get rate suggestions from Mempool.space when closing a channel
Community Sponsors: support for Nostr profiles
New language support: Croatian
Enhanced iPad support
00:25:52 Nunchuk Android v1.9.24
Improved support for Blockstream Jade
Improved support for Foundation Passport
Option to dismiss home banner
Bug fixes and UI improvements
00:26:17 Muun 2.7.3
You can now set your wallet to prioritize Lightning for incoming transactions or show a unified QR code for BTC and LN.
00:26:30 Blockstream Green Android v3.9.2
Added CSAT forms
00:26:39 Breez 0.15 http Sync (Pre-release)
Neutrino sync over http
Add Tor support
Add German translation
Changed scan library
Fix episode ID in TLV
Various bug fixes
00:27:10 Hexa Wallet v2.1.3
With this release, we’ve completely revamped the backend for using Hexa with your own node.
Now Hexa uses Fulcrum behind the scenes to help you enhance your privacy. You can also connect to more nodes now.
00:27:37 BDK v0.27.0-rc.1
A maintenance release with a bump in project MSRV to 1.57.0, updated dependence and a few developer oriented improvements.
Improvements include better error formatting, don’t default to async/await for wasm32 and adding derived PartialEq and Eq on SyncTime.
00:28:46 Mutiny Wallet
00:32:12 nix-bitcoin-0.0.86
new dev tools and docs that help debugging and development
00:32:34 MyNode v0.3.09
Add LndBoss v2.16.0
Add ability to append custom Bitcoin config
Add ability to append custom LND config
00:32:55 Joinmarket v0.9.9
Onion messaging related fixes and changes
New public orderbook
Correct errors in transaction size estimation
Fixes to sendpayment
00:33:46 Nostr
00:35:09 Cashu
Release: Cashu JS wallet with multimint support and many bug fixes: https://cashu.me 👈
00:35:28 Fedipool: Fedimint Could Mitigate Bitcoin Mining Pool Concerns
Fedimint is an emerging open source protocol that combines bitcoin, lightning, chaumian ecash, and federated custodians (called Guardians) to create community wallets that are easy to use, have strong privacy, reduced custodial risk, cheap and fast payments within the community, and interoperability with all bitcoin wallets.
Current Fedimint development is focused on easy to use consumer wallets that could replace usage of major custodial wallet providers such as Binance and Wallet of Satoshi, but what if the same tech was used to replace major custodial mining pools such as Foundry and AntPool.
00:38:38 Alby v1.25.1: Reflections on the 1970s
Nostr is now moved out of the hidden “Alby labs”! 🎉 Every account in the Alby extension can now have Nostr keys making Alby the easiest way to manage your Nostr keys and use Nostr web clients. Now you can manage multiple Nostr identities in the extension.
With the Alby companion app for Tor we already made it possible and managed to allow people to use their nodes running behind Tor (thanks to libtor).
To make it even easier to connect to your self-custodial LND node Alby now supports Lightning Node Connect (LNC). LNC is Lightning Labs’ mechanism to create an encrypted connection to a LND node
you now can easily use lightning and Nostr apps safely with the Tor Browser or with an all-private window in Firefox
00:40:32 The Bitcoin Company v1.25
Added lightning address auto-withdrawals
00:41:14 Keeper v1.0.0
Now on mainnet
Use all your signing devices (hardware wallets) on mainnet now
Project spotlight
00:41:51 Brainbow: A stateless Bitcoin wallet with credentials instead of 12/24 recovery seed words.
00:42:23 HuntingSats: Earn millions of sats from cracking a bitcoin wallet
00:42:42 SATurn: Connect your getalby.com Account and see which content resonates most with your audience and recognize your top contributors.
00:43:22 DIY offline coin exchanger, EUR to BTC (by dnilabs with LNbits FOSSA (FOSS ATM)
Boosts
00:43:37 Thanks to everyone who streamed sats, and shoutout to our top boosters:
Anonymous (250K sats) “Another great episode”
Anonymous (50K sats) “real signal”
@apemithrandir (7,777 sats X3) “great talk!”
@marcellus (10K sats) “Great pod. You’ve created a very interesting and fun show. Keep doing it and keep building great HWW,”
@hgw39 (5K sats X2) “Great learnings and tips. Becoming one of my regular BTC listens now. Thanks!”
Jade Ox (10K sats) “Thanks your for this fabulous podcast - Niels”
@utxo_one (5K sats X2) “anything featuring the greatest mobile wallet ever ZEUS gets a boost”
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter
00:45:25 Serverless payjoin proposal
Dan Gould posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a proposal and proof of concept implementation for a serverless version of BIP78, the payjoin protocol.
Bitcoin Core #26471 reduces the default mempool capacity to 5MB (from 300MB) when a user turns on -blocksonly mode.
Since unused mempool memory is shared with dbcache, this change also reduces the default dbcache size in -blocksonly mode. Users may still configure a larger mempool capacity using the -maxmempool option.
00:45:42 Ephemeral anchors compared to SIGHASH_GROUP
Anthony Towns posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list an analysis comparing the recent ephemeral anchors proposal to an older SIGHASH_GROUP proposal.
Request for proof that an async payment was accepted
Valentine Wallace posted to the Lightning-Dev mailing list a request for researchers to investigate how someone making an async payment could receive proof that they paid
00:46:28 Wallet Labels Export Format merged
00:45:50 Proposal for new vault-specific opcodes
James O’Beirne posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a proposal for a soft fork to add two new opcodes, OP_VAULT and OP_UNVAULT.
00:45:58 Kraken announces sending to taproot addresses
In a recent blog post, Kraken announced they support withdrawing (sending) to bech32m addresses.
00:46:02 Whirlpool coinjoin rust client library announced
The Samourai Whirlpool Client is a rust library for interacting with the Whirlpool coinjoin platform.
00:46:06 Ledger supports miniscript Ledger’s Bitcoin firmware v2.1.0 release for its hardware signing devices supports miniscript, as announced previously.
News & Noteworthy
00:49:24 “Why do we have to be so conservative with Bitcoin soft-forks? What do we have to conserve? Bitcoin is a niche currency with very few users. Bitcoin is very far away from achieving its goal to become the world’s single currency. It will not be possible to get there without risks.” - Fiatjaf
00:51:59 Congress’ FTX Problem: 1 in 3 Members Got Cash From Crypto Exchange’s Bosses [Coindesk]
More than one in three of the 535 senators and representatives in the U.S. Congress showed up to the new session with FTX baggage, having received campaign support from one of the senior executives of the fraud-ridden crypto giant.
CoinDesk has identified 196 members of the new Congress – many of whom were just sworn in last week – who took cash from Sam Bankman-Fried or other senior executives at FTX
00:52:15 Blockstream Raises USD $125M to Expand Mining Operations [Press Release]
Leading Bitcoin infrastructure firm Blockstream has announced raising USD $125 million in convertible note and secured loan financing to expand its institutional bitcoin mining colocation services
With over 500 Megawatts in its development pipeline, Blockstream is one of the world’s largest bitcoin mining operators. Blockstream will also expand its renewable energy mining products, and continue developing its own bitcoin miner - the first institutional-grade bitcoin miner purpose-built to scale.
00:52:29 Fold launches enterprise rewards API [API Wepage]
“We’re launching our enterprise rewards api at @fold_app to enable any bank, card or loyalty program to offer bitcoin rewards— a $100B+ market.”[@wlrvs] to enable any bank, card or loyalty program to offer bitcoin rewards— a $100B+ market
00:53:05 Lightning is live with Clover. [Jack Mallers Twitter]
Strike is officially an integrated partner of the payments giant @Fiserv and have’ve launched a public pilot with @CloverCommerce point-of-sale terminals.
Clover merchants can now accept cheaper, faster, cash-final USD over LN.
90-day pilot period initiated. Over the next 90 days settlement speed + cost will be measured compared to other networks and track new business Lightning brings to merchants that enable it.
After the pilot, Strike will launch in the Clover App Store and look to integrate into Clover directly, enabling LN as an accepted payment network for all Clover merchants by default, sitting next to card networks like Visa and MasterCard.
Any Clover merchant can enable payments over Lightning today.
If you want to enable cheaper, faster, cash-final payments over LN with @CloverCommerce, email partners@strike.me
00:53:50 Bitcoin-based app Strike expands in Philippines to grow cross-border payment solutions [Techcrunch]
Strike, a Bitcoin-based payment network and financial app, is expanding to the Philippines to grow cross-border payments and remittance markets.
“The Philippines is one of the biggest remitting markets in the world, especially from the United States” ~ Jack Mallers
Aside from the Philippines, Strike plans on expanding further in the Latin American and African regions as well due to the “extreme amount of demand,” Mallers shared.
00:56:13 BTC Pay Server Vulnerability disclosure affecting BTCPay Server V1.3.0 through V1.5.3 [BTC Pay Server Blog]
A remote attacker can obtain sensitive information when a Point of Sale app ( BTCPay Server component) is publicly exposed.
If an external node was used, xpub (public key) and lightning credentials were possibly leaked. If you used an internal node, only xpub could have been possibly leaked.
On May 28, 2022 Antoine Poinsot responsibly disclosed the vulnerability
On the same day BTC Pay Server released v1.5.4 that included a patch for said vulnerability.
Antoine awarded 5000 USD reward due to the severity of the vulnerability. Due to the severity of this vulnerability, it’s the highest paid bounty so far.
00:57:11 Introducing Watch Swaps [lightningnetwork.plus]
A service similar to the Liquidity Swaps, but instead of opening channels to each other, node operators will watch each other’s nodes with their watchtower services to protect against malicious channel force closure attacks, and the resulting potential loss of funds.
00:58:03 Ordinals Data [Bitmex]
Up until 7 February 2023, Bitmex have identified over 13,000 of these transactions, which take up 526MB of Bitcoin blockspace.
The total spend of these transactions is 6.77 BTC.
00:58:41 Breez temporarily removed from app store due to crashes after latest update
It seems this issue only affects users w/o a backup, so it’s VERY important you don’t uninstall Breez so you will be able to recover your funds. We’ve temporarily removed Breez from the App Store and are working to get the issue fixed ASAP. [@Breez]
00:59:16 Dubai Prohibits Privacy Coins Like Monero Under New Crypto Rules [Coindesk]
The issuance of anonymity-enhancing crypto are banned under the Emirate’s new regulations for digital assets.
The new rules define anonymity-enhancing crypto as “a type of Virtual Asset which prevents the tracing of transactions or record of ownership through distributed public ledgers and for which the [Virtual Asset Service Provider] has no mitigating technologies or mechanisms to allow traceability or identification of ownership.”
Crypto activities in Dubai are supervised by its Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), set up last year. The emirate has been working to attract attract crypto and blockchain companies to set up shop in Dubai.
00:59:29 Berlin and Nigeria Lightning Conferences Cancelled [Source: @callebtc]
00:59:39 Nostrica Announced [Costa Rica, March 19-21]
01:00:41 The Power of Lightning Summit 2023
01:01:36 Laanwj: Of regrets
01:04:13 Opensats
Shoutouts
01:07:26 Lake District BTC is organising a Bitcoin meet up where they climb England’s highest peak and essentially hold the highest meet up to date. They plan on holding 2-4 of these types of events throughout the year, where the meet up is based solely around an outdoor activity. Check out the Twitter page @LakeDistrictBTC for event details.
Audience Questions
01:07:51 “Can NVK and guests speak about the security between 12- and 24-word seeds, and also Trezor’s security since they are the ones generating most of the 12-word seeds on/for hardware wallets. Of course, most software wallets also generate 12-word seeds. If 12-word seeds are good enough, would the CC consider generating them too, and can we still SeedXor 12-word seeds? In an extreme case where we need to temporarily memorize a list of words, 12 is much easier. Really enjoying the podcast! Thank you, gillian.”
Episode submission ideas
We’re looking for ideas for interesting panel conversations. To send Bitcoin related questions, just go to bitcoin.review and follow the contact links at the bottom of the page.
Get in touch with the pod
Nostr & LN ⚡nvk@nvk.org (not an email!)