MFTV & Bitcoin Rails | coauthor BIP 360 | Head of @MARAFoundation_ @MARA
Joined February 2010
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I’ve been wanting to do a “Great Consensus Cleanup” episode for ages now - given that it’s one of the least well understood BIPs out there (IMO) and is looking more and more likely to instigate Bitcoin’s next soft fork activation. Seems about time we break this down on the show.
Thanks to its progenitor @TheBlueMatt for joining me — and grateful to @darosior for his work in reviving this proposal in the form of BIP 54 🙏🙏
Bitcoin’s Next Soft Fork: Quantum or the Great Consensus Cleanup? | MATT CORALLO
🔗 YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=8H95SW7e…
🌿 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/6l7…
Following years of community gridlock post-Taproot, there’s growing confidence among experts that Bitcoin's next soft fork will be a low-controversy effort to address four long-standing consensus-level bugs through the activation of BIP 54, a.k.a. the “Great Consensus Cleanup.”
Originally put forward by today’s guest, Matt Corallo (@TheBlueMatt), and more recently revised by Antoine Poinsot (@darosior), the upgrade addresses the “cruft” of Bitcoin’s design — including edge-case vulnerabilities like certain kinds of poison blocks, time warp attacks, and others.
At the same time, developer resources are rapidly moving towards quantum resistance proposals for Bitcoin — including BIP 360 (co-authored by Hunter Beast, Ethan Heilman, and Head of MARA Foundation Isabel Foxen Duke) and the recently circulated “SHRINCs” signature proposal by the @blksresearch team and collaborators like Heilman (@Ethan_Heilman) and @conduition_io.
This episode of MFTV breaks down the Great Consensus Cleanup and the post-quantum output type debate — shedding light on key challenges of Bitcoin governance along the way.
TIMESTAMPS:
🧹 01:33 Introducing the “Great Consensus Cleanup”
🧪 11:08 Bug 1: “Poison Blocks”
⏳ 18:01 Bug 2: Time warp attacks
🌲 26:19 Bug 3: Merkle tree malleability
🪙 34:16 Bug 4: Duplicate coinbase transactions
⛏️ 43:37 The limits of Stratum V1
🌐 52:24 How SV2 influences decentralization
🔑 01:07:11 Deployment of post-quantum cryptography
🏷️ 01:10:44 Comparing P2MR and P2TRv2
🛡️ 01:23:30 P2QR and the post-quantum trade-offs
⚛️ 01:33:45 The impact of Google’s Willow milestone
Isabel Foxen Duke⚡️ retweeted
MARA ha minado su primer bloque Stratum V2 💪💪
SV2 mejora la eficiencia de la minería, reduce el uso de ancho de banda y fortalece la seguridad a través de conexiones encriptadas y autenticadas. También permite a los mineros seleccionar sus propias transacciones en lugar de depender de los pools, fortaleciendo la descentralización de Bitcoin y su resistencia a la censura.
Proud to share that @MARA has mined its first Stratum V2 block 💪💪
SV2 improves mining efficiency, reduces bandwidth usage, and strengthens security through encrypted, authenticated connections. It also enables miners to select their own transactions rather than relying on pools, strengthening Bitcoin’s decentralization and censorship resistance.
This was a major lift for the @MARA mining operations team. Congratulations to everyone involved with this milestone and for leading the way in a major industry transition!
Additional thanks to @spiral_xyz @pavlenex and everyone involved in the Stratum V2 Working Group for their support 🙏
Isabel Foxen Duke⚡️ retweeted
MARA mined its first Stratum V2 block yesterday — a major upgrade in miner coordination software that the community has been working on for years (more on this in the interview with SV2 co-author @TheBlueMatt below).
SV2 enables encrypted communication for miners, lower latency, and a slew of efficiency benefits for solo miners.
That said, the real magic is in making this technology available for pools — where critical miner decentralization benefits take place — reducing centralized control of block template generation by mining pools.
MARA Foundation has been proud to support Stratum V2 R&D via the SV2 Working Group with @spiral_xyz @pavlenex and others.
Congrats to @avg_gary and the @MARA mining ops team for pushing this milestone over the line.
"Miners are decentralized, just not pools," Corallo said. "If we can shift what needs to be decentralized from the pools to the miners, then it's a pretty huge win."
Bitcoin’s Next Soft Fork: Quantum or the Great Consensus Cleanup? | MATT CORALLO
🔗 YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=8H95SW7e…
🌿 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/6l7…
Following years of community gridlock post-Taproot, there’s growing confidence among experts that Bitcoin's next soft fork will be a low-controversy effort to address four long-standing consensus-level bugs through the activation of BIP 54, a.k.a. the “Great Consensus Cleanup.”
Originally put forward by today’s guest, Matt Corallo (@TheBlueMatt), and more recently revised by Antoine Poinsot (@darosior), the upgrade addresses the “cruft” of Bitcoin’s design — including edge-case vulnerabilities like certain kinds of poison blocks, time warp attacks, and others.
At the same time, developer resources are rapidly moving towards quantum resistance proposals for Bitcoin — including BIP 360 (co-authored by Hunter Beast, Ethan Heilman, and Head of MARA Foundation Isabel Foxen Duke) and the recently circulated “SHRINCs” signature proposal by the @blksresearch team and collaborators like Heilman (@Ethan_Heilman) and @conduition_io.
This episode of MFTV breaks down the Great Consensus Cleanup and the post-quantum output type debate — shedding light on key challenges of Bitcoin governance along the way.
TIMESTAMPS:
🧹 01:33 Introducing the “Great Consensus Cleanup”
🧪 11:08 Bug 1: “Poison Blocks”
⏳ 18:01 Bug 2: Time warp attacks
🌲 26:19 Bug 3: Merkle tree malleability
🪙 34:16 Bug 4: Duplicate coinbase transactions
⛏️ 43:37 The limits of Stratum V1
🌐 52:24 How SV2 influences decentralization
🔑 01:07:11 Deployment of post-quantum cryptography
🏷️ 01:10:44 Comparing P2MR and P2TRv2
🛡️ 01:23:30 P2QR and the post-quantum trade-offs
⚛️ 01:33:45 The impact of Google’s Willow milestone
Isabel Foxen Duke⚡️ retweeted
JUST IN: Marathon (@MARA) mines its first Stratum v2 block, a significant expansion of the mining hashrate using SV2
Proud to share that @MARA has mined its first Stratum V2 block 💪💪
SV2 improves mining efficiency, reduces bandwidth usage, and strengthens security through encrypted, authenticated connections. It also enables miners to select their own transactions rather than relying on pools, strengthening Bitcoin’s decentralization and censorship resistance.
This was a major lift for the @MARA mining operations team. Congratulations to everyone involved with this milestone and for leading the way in a major industry transition!
Additional thanks to @spiral_xyz @pavlenex and everyone involved in the Stratum V2 Working Group for their support 🙏
This was a major milestone for @MARA - congrats to the mining ops team, especially @avg_gary for leading the charge!
More details about SV2 in MFTV interview with co-creator @thebluematt in the comments 🔥
Proud to share that @MARA has mined its first Stratum V2 block 💪💪
SV2 improves mining efficiency, reduces bandwidth usage, and strengthens security through encrypted, authenticated connections. It also enables miners to select their own transactions rather than relying on pools, strengthening Bitcoin’s decentralization and censorship resistance.
This was a major lift for the @MARA mining operations team. Congratulations to everyone involved with this milestone and for leading the way in a major industry transition!
Additional thanks to @spiral_xyz @pavlenex and everyone involved in the Stratum V2 Working Group for their support 🙏
FULL INTERVIEW w SV2 co-author @TheBlueMatt
Bitcoin’s Next Soft Fork: Quantum or the Great Consensus Cleanup? | MATT CORALLO
🔗 YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=8H95SW7e…
🌿 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/6l7…
Following years of community gridlock post-Taproot, there’s growing confidence among experts that Bitcoin's next soft fork will be a low-controversy effort to address four long-standing consensus-level bugs through the activation of BIP 54, a.k.a. the “Great Consensus Cleanup.”
Originally put forward by today’s guest, Matt Corallo (@TheBlueMatt), and more recently revised by Antoine Poinsot (@darosior), the upgrade addresses the “cruft” of Bitcoin’s design — including edge-case vulnerabilities like certain kinds of poison blocks, time warp attacks, and others.
At the same time, developer resources are rapidly moving towards quantum resistance proposals for Bitcoin — including BIP 360 (co-authored by Hunter Beast, Ethan Heilman, and Head of MARA Foundation Isabel Foxen Duke) and the recently circulated “SHRINCs” signature proposal by the @blksresearch team and collaborators like Heilman (@Ethan_Heilman) and @conduition_io.
This episode of MFTV breaks down the Great Consensus Cleanup and the post-quantum output type debate — shedding light on key challenges of Bitcoin governance along the way.
TIMESTAMPS:
🧹 01:33 Introducing the “Great Consensus Cleanup”
🧪 11:08 Bug 1: “Poison Blocks”
⏳ 18:01 Bug 2: Time warp attacks
🌲 26:19 Bug 3: Merkle tree malleability
🪙 34:16 Bug 4: Duplicate coinbase transactions
⛏️ 43:37 The limits of Stratum V1
🌐 52:24 How SV2 influences decentralization
🔑 01:07:11 Deployment of post-quantum cryptography
🏷️ 01:10:44 Comparing P2MR and P2TRv2
🛡️ 01:23:30 P2QR and the post-quantum trade-offs
⚛️ 01:33:45 The impact of Google’s Willow milestone
125
Isabel Foxen Duke⚡️ retweeted
Stratum V2 even has advantages for private pools like MARA. Among other things, by allowing block templates to be created physically closer to hash power, reducing latency.
Bandwidth reduction is useful too: lots of hash power is near stranded energy sources with slow internet.
Proud to share that @MARA has mined its first Stratum V2 block 💪💪
SV2 improves mining efficiency, reduces bandwidth usage, and strengthens security through encrypted, authenticated connections. It also enables miners to select their own transactions rather than relying on pools, strengthening Bitcoin’s decentralization and censorship resistance.
This was a major lift for the @MARA mining operations team. Congratulations to everyone involved with this milestone and for leading the way in a major industry transition!
Additional thanks to @spiral_xyz @pavlenex and everyone involved in the Stratum V2 Working Group for their support 🙏
Isabel Foxen Duke⚡️ retweeted
Big day with MARA mining a block 975369 using Sv2!
Most people focus on decentralized template generation when they think of Stratum V2 — but there are arguably even more significant and immediate business benefits for miners making the switch.
I was floored to learn how common man-in-the-middle attacks (explained by @thebluematt in this clip) are, in part because Stratum V1, the longstanding mining communication protocol, has remained unencrypted for well over a decade.
Very proud to see @MARA adopting Stratum V2 and contributing to the Stratum V2 Working Group led by @pavlenex. Thanks to @avg_gary for sharing your expertise here as well!
Isabel Foxen Duke⚡️ retweeted
with AI these MITM attacks are exponentially easier to do
@MARAFoundation_ is taking a big step in the direction of moving away from this attack vector with @StratumV2
Most people focus on decentralized template generation when they think of Stratum V2 — but there are arguably even more significant and immediate business benefits for miners making the switch.
I was floored to learn how common man-in-the-middle attacks (explained by @thebluematt in this clip) are, in part because Stratum V1, the longstanding mining communication protocol, has remained unencrypted for well over a decade.
Very proud to see @MARA adopting Stratum V2 and contributing to the Stratum V2 Working Group led by @pavlenex. Thanks to @avg_gary for sharing your expertise here as well!
Really excited to share this interview with @Trezor CTO @tsusanka tomorrow —there’s so much going on with PQ wallet upgrades that I honestly hadn’t even thought about until prepping for this interview… not the least of which is: pretty much all hardware devices will have to be physically traded in for PQ devices as part of the transition.
Hardware wallets use ECC functions all over the place right now… think firmware and device authentication to name the key examples.
Most are focused on when we’ll have quantum-resistant Bitcoin addresses at the network level, with the expectation that the migration of all quantum-vulnerable coins will take years.
What people often miss, however, is that folks who self-custody will also need to upgrade their physical devices to hardware with post-quantum authentication processes, for instance.
@Trezor CTO @tsusanka shares candidly that while some assumed their release of a “quantum-ready” device last year was for marketing purposes — given that Bitcoin itself is far from ready to execute post-quantum transactions on the network level — in practice, the team was preparing for potential device migrations to take years, hoping their customers will start the migration process with plenty of time to spare.
Full MFTV interview drops tomorrow. Set your alarms 🚨
Isabel Foxen Duke⚡️ retweeted
Most are focused on when we’ll have quantum-resistant Bitcoin addresses at the network level, with the expectation that the migration of all quantum-vulnerable coins will take years.
What people often miss, however, is that folks who self-custody will also need to upgrade their physical devices to hardware with post-quantum authentication processes, for instance.
@Trezor CTO @tsusanka shares candidly that while some assumed their release of a “quantum-ready” device last year was for marketing purposes — given that Bitcoin itself is far from ready to execute post-quantum transactions on the network level — in practice, the team was preparing for potential device migrations to take years, hoping their customers will start the migration process with plenty of time to spare.
Full MFTV interview drops tomorrow. Set your alarms 🚨
Isabel Foxen Duke⚡️ retweeted
SHA-256 is not broken, but its security margin lost 1 more round this year:
Last week I found a collision attack on reduced 39-round that improves prior art by over 30 bits and the first differential attack on that round better than generic search on @yukonresearch Hashsmash board.
The attack rests on the same method as prior art ePrint 2026/1120 with new insights that first 2 state words could remain free, allowing a critical condition at step 16 rebuilt as a claw-search problem rather than a probabilistic filter. Took days of watching SAT logs, burning cores and arguing with Claude on what's possible to get a result close to generic search.
Since my initial submission, other hashsmash participants sraiw, @cyberaxe, @privacymage, @lamb356_ and @geeknik pushed it down by over 6.5 bits, currently estimated at 118.15 bits. The tree of submissions is hard to follow, so I put the construction, insights and numbers into a blog and am working on detailed technical report.
It's fascinating to see an initial structural observation develop into an improvement in the reduced-round collision frontier within days. AI is now a real aid in cryptanalysis and open collaboration speeds it up.
Isabel Foxen Duke⚡️ retweeted
banger post from cory on the mailing list: quantum landmines
after q-day, legacy spends would require restricted outputs with a 30-day delay
pre-q-day proof lets owners sweep their coins + attacker’s collateral
reactive security is cool (covenants btw)
groups.google.com/g/bitcoind…
Most people focus on decentralized template generation when they think of Stratum V2 — but there are arguably even more significant and immediate business benefits for miners making the switch.
I was floored to learn how common man-in-the-middle attacks (explained by @thebluematt in this clip) are, in part because Stratum V1, the longstanding mining communication protocol, has remained unencrypted for well over a decade.
Very proud to see @MARA adopting Stratum V2 and contributing to the Stratum V2 Working Group led by @pavlenex. Thanks to @avg_gary for sharing your expertise here as well!
FULL EPISODE: teapaw.org/MARAFoundation_/status…
Bitcoin’s Next Soft Fork: Quantum or the Great Consensus Cleanup? | MATT CORALLO
🔗 YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=8H95SW7e…
🌿 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/6l7…
Following years of community gridlock post-Taproot, there’s growing confidence among experts that Bitcoin's next soft fork will be a low-controversy effort to address four long-standing consensus-level bugs through the activation of BIP 54, a.k.a. the “Great Consensus Cleanup.”
Originally put forward by today’s guest, Matt Corallo (@TheBlueMatt), and more recently revised by Antoine Poinsot (@darosior), the upgrade addresses the “cruft” of Bitcoin’s design — including edge-case vulnerabilities like certain kinds of poison blocks, time warp attacks, and others.
At the same time, developer resources are rapidly moving towards quantum resistance proposals for Bitcoin — including BIP 360 (co-authored by Hunter Beast, Ethan Heilman, and Head of MARA Foundation Isabel Foxen Duke) and the recently circulated “SHRINCs” signature proposal by the @blksresearch team and collaborators like Heilman (@Ethan_Heilman) and @conduition_io.
This episode of MFTV breaks down the Great Consensus Cleanup and the post-quantum output type debate — shedding light on key challenges of Bitcoin governance along the way.
TIMESTAMPS:
🧹 01:33 Introducing the “Great Consensus Cleanup”
🧪 11:08 Bug 1: “Poison Blocks”
⏳ 18:01 Bug 2: Time warp attacks
🌲 26:19 Bug 3: Merkle tree malleability
🪙 34:16 Bug 4: Duplicate coinbase transactions
⛏️ 43:37 The limits of Stratum V1
🌐 52:24 How SV2 influences decentralization
🔑 01:07:11 Deployment of post-quantum cryptography
🏷️ 01:10:44 Comparing P2MR and P2TRv2
🛡️ 01:23:30 P2QR and the post-quantum trade-offs
⚛️ 01:33:45 The impact of Google’s Willow milestone
1
228
Isabel Foxen Duke⚡️ retweeted
Phil Potter — co-founder of Tether and core architect of the world’s first stablecoin — is easily one of the most influential figures in the history of digital payments and crypto infrastructure.
While stablecoins began as a tool for Bitcoin market plumbing, they quickly evolved into one of the most important pieces of fiat infrastructure globally — and, for better or for worse, are now the most widely used digital assets use case beyond Bitcoin itself.
Tomorrow: Phil's first video interview since 2019 drops on Bitcoin Rails. Drop a follow so you don’t miss it.
Isabel Foxen Duke⚡️ retweeted
The co-author of BIP-360 says #Bitcoin needs to be quantum-ready by 2032.
Watch ⚡️
youtube.com/watch?v=2Ud65M8a…
