
Funding Bitcoin node security, testing, and maintenance @bitcoinbrink Blocking and tackling at @bitcoinoptech
Joined September 2018
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Mike Schmidt retweeted
I wrote a blog post on the recent exploits in the Bitcoin ecosystem, how Bitcoin Core is holding up, and how I think the community can get ahead of the models:
dergoegge.de/blog/somethings…
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Erick Cestari (@iamflops) and Adam Gibson joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #427:
News
● Disclosure of two DoS vulnerabilities fixed in Eclair v0.14.1 (0:53)
● Offchain contracts in Lightning channels (12:57)
Releases and release candidates
● Bitcoin Core 32.0rc4 (43:15)
Notable code and documentation changes
● Eclair #3396 (49:25)
● Eclair #3399 (53:23)
● Eclair #3395 (57:23)
● Eclair #3401 (59:09)
● LDK #5080 (1:01:03)
● LDK #5087 (1:02:46)
● LND #11068 (1:05:04)
● Rust Bitcoin #6956 (1:07:44)
● BDK #2319 (1:10:22)
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #427 is here:
- summarizes the disclosure of two denial-of-service vulnerabilities in older versions of Eclair
- describes a proposed scheme for running complex multi-round contracts inside Lightning channels
- Optech Newsletter #427 Podcast
bitcoinops.org/en/newsletter…
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Clara Shikhelman (@ClaraShik) and Elias Rohrer (@_tnull) joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #426:
News
● Dynamic one-byte message type IDs for BIP324 (45:02)
● Discussion of conventions for tagged hash tags in BIPs (49:04)
● Proposal for onchain, private bitcoin transfers with no consensus changes (1:15)
Releases and release candidates
● Bitcoin Core 32.0rc3 (53:34)
● Core Lightning 26.06.9 (54:38)
● LDK v0.3-rc3 (23:38)
● LDK v0.2.7 (24:33)
● BTCPay Server 2.4.5 (56:55)
Notable code and documentation changes
● Bitcoin Core #36277 (59:51)
● Bitcoin Core #36365 (1:05:09)
● Bitcoin Core #36338 (1:07:53)
● Bitcoin Core #32895 (1:10:38)
● Core Lightning #9582 (1:12:38)
● Eclair #3390 (1:18:03)
● LDK #5057 (33:00)
● LDK #5042 (35:55)
● LDK #5046 (38:25)
● LDK #5028 (41:43)
● LND #11290 (1:20:41)
first set of red team grants announced, more soon, trying to support as quickly as possible
A dedicated fund to reimburse the cost of AI tokens that developers and security researchers are incurring to find and disclose vulnerabilities in critical Bitcoin infrastructure.
opensats.org/blog/red-team-g…
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Replying to @RSync25
Ultimately the rubber meets the road at code review. It would be great to have more code review!
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #426 is here:
- links to a draft BIP for letting peers choose their own one-byte message type IDs over the version 2 P2P transport
- summarizes a discussion about whether BIPs should include their number in tagged hash tags
- describes a proposed metaprotocol for private onchain transfers that requires no consensus changes
- Optech Newsletter #426 Podcast
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Matt Morehouse joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #425:
News
● Disclosure of two DoS vulnerabilities in Eclair (1:01)
● Proposal for wallet label synchronization (15:25)
Changing consensus
● Continued discussion of PQC output types (21:36)
● Block-wide signature aggregation via SNARKs (27:17)
● Bounds on chain length with BIP54 time warp fixes (35:19)
● Comparing covenant proposals for vaults (39:23)
● Depots for probabilistic Lightning channels (43:18)
Releases and release candidates
● LND v0.21.4-beta.rc1 (48:40)
● LND v0.20.5-beta.rc1 (50:29)
Notable code and documentation changes
● Bitcoin Core #29278 (51:55)
● Bitcoin Core #35984 (53:43)
● Bitcoin Core #35301 (56:45)
● Bitcoin Core #36312 (58:51)
● Bitcoin Core #36284 (1:01:59)
● Bitcoin Core #35752 (1:07:47)
● Bitcoin Core #35813 (1:11:46)
● BIPs #2276 (1:13:07)
● LDK #4993 (1:16:39)
● LND #11173 (1:19:40)
● LND #11190 (1:22:12)
● LND #11212 (1:27:37)
● LND #11258 (1:29:58)
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #425 is here:
- summarizes the responsible disclosure of two denial-of-service vulnerabilities affecting older versions of Eclair
- describes a proposal for synchronizing wallet labels between devices through an untrusted store
- recaps continued discussion of PQC output types
- describes an approach to block-wide signature aggregation via SNARKs
- summarizes bounds on chain length with BIP54 time warp fixes
- links to research comparing covenant proposals for vaults
- discusses the depots idea for probabilistic Lightning channels
- Optech Newsletter #425 Podcast
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Ahmet Kurt (@startimeahmet) and Jan B (@_jan__b) joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #424:
News
● Proposal for a post-quantum Lightning Network (1:10)
Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange
● What would be a drawback if sum instead of SHA256 of amounts was used in the taproot signature message? (36:18)
● Post-BIP110 fork is it necessary to resync from block 0? (39:32)
● Can a Bitcoin node build a partial UTXO set from only the most recent blocks and use it to validate new transactions? (42:16)
Releases and release candidates
● Bitcoin Core 32.0rc2 (21:13)
● Core Lightning 26.06.8 (45:36)
● LDK v0.3-rc2 (47:15)
Notable code and documentation changes
● Bitcoin Core #34566 (51:31)
● BIPs #1951 (54:14)
● BIPs #2224 (57:45)
● Core Lightning #9507 (1:02:00)
● Core Lightning #9508 (1:07:35)
● Core Lightning #9509 (1:12:02)
● Core Lightning #9510 (1:16:03)
● Core Lightning #9513 (1:20:01)
● LND #11198 (1:21:47)
● LND #11146 (1:24:15)
● LND #11132 (1:27:20)
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Some personal news:
✅ Loupe has produced 26,821 findings across 43 open-source bitcoin repos
✅ Average successful scan took 2H 52M and returned 53.6 findings
✅ Longest scan ran for 36H 58M
✅ 26,809/26,821 findings shipped a proof-of-concept & 12,774 shipped a proposed patch
Mike Schmidt retweeted
piles and piles of AI reported bug fixes included
A new release candidate of Bitcoin Core, v32.0rc2, is available for testing.
This is a new major release, and follows v31.1.
Work-in-progress release notes are here: github.com/bitcoin-core/bitc…
Binaries are available here: bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-…
Mike Schmidt retweeted
A new release candidate of Bitcoin Core, v32.0rc2, is available for testing.
This is a new major release, and follows v31.1.
Work-in-progress release notes are here: github.com/bitcoin-core/bitc…
Binaries are available here: bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-…
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #424 is here:
- describes a proposal for upgrading the offchain protocols of the Lightning Network to post-quantum security
- summarizes popular Q&A from Stack Exchange
- Optech Newsletter #424 Podcast
bitcoinops.org/en/newsletter…
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Davidson Souza (@Erik17192799), Eric Price, and PortlandHODL (@PortlandHODL) joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #423:
News
● Vardiff controllers that strand slowing miners (23:06)
● Improvements in Utreexo initial block download (1:18)
● New BIP draft for unspendable internal keys (1:17:51)
Changes to services and client software
● BitBoxApp adds Spark-based Lightning payments (1:24:09)
● Covenants.diy script editor (1:28:40)
● EntropyLab offline key calculator (59:46)
Releases and release candidates
● Eclair 0.14.3 (1:31:10)
Notable code and documentation changes
● Bitcoin Core #35445 (1:33:34)
● Bitcoin Core #36076 (1:38:51)
● Bitcoin Core #36150 (1:42:18)
● Bitcoin Core #36174 (1:44:37)
● Bitcoin Core #34743 (1:46:13)
● Bitcoin Core #36081 (1:48:07)
● Bitcoin Core #35975 (1:48:59)
● BIPs #2241 (1:50:04)
● BIPs #2258 (1:53:09)
● Eclair #3380 (1:56:33)
● Eclair #3376 (1:57:37)
● Eclair #3372 (2:04:34)
● LND #11163 (2:05:57)
● BDK #2246 (2:07:44)
“On one side was Google, the big name, the fancy offices, all of that. On the other side I could work on Bitcoin, which I found both technically fascinating and genuinely important.”
- @danielabrozzoni
opensats.org/blog/developer-…
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #423 is here:
- summarizes an analysis of mining pool difficulty controllers stranding slowed miners
- describes a proposed improvement to Utreexo’s initial block download
- links to a draft BIP for specifying unspendable taproot internal keys
- summarizes changes to services/client software
- Optech Newsletter #423 Podcast
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Michael Ford (@fanquake) presented an update on his multi-year effort to ship fully static bitcoind binaries:
- Static vs dynamic linking
- Splitting Guix builds
- Running on older systems
- Open questions
- An experimental LLVM-only toolchain
- Why not macOS and Windows
- Q&A
Mike Schmidt retweeted
> Bitcoin Core has spent more than a century of CPU time fuzzing individual functions and critical components (though oss-fuzz, Fuzzor, bitcoinfuzz and individual contributors), and decades of CPU time simulating small networks of full nodes under test (Antithesis, Fuzzamoto). I can’t establish causality from this alone, but my strong suspicion is that the sustained testing effort is an important reason these projects have become so robust.
I wrote a blog post on the recent exploits in the Bitcoin ecosystem, how Bitcoin Core is holding up, and how I think the community can get ahead of the models:
dergoegge.de/blog/somethings…














