Socratic Seminar 1 - Nov 24th 2019

The seminar will take place on Nov 24th, 18:00, at the embassy. See the events on Facebook and Meetup.com for more details.

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Marked with [p] are priority items, we will go through these first

Releases

• [p] Bitcoin Core 0.19.0.1 ^*
• [p] Wasabi 1.1.9.3 nightly release (built-in full node WIP) ^*
• [p] BTCPay 0.1.3.142 (integrated BTCPayServer Vault) ^*
• [p] lnd 0.8.1 beta (Bitcoin Core 0.19 compatibility, 0.8 enabled mainnet neutrino) ^*
• Zap 0.6.0 beta release + 0.6.1, 0.6.2 (lnurl, on-chain fallback, message signing) ^*

Research

• [p] Reducing Bitcoin Transaction Sizes with x-only Pubkeys
• [p] Bitcoin wallet software comparison (table) ^*
• Coin Selection with Leverage
• An investigation of MMM ponzi scheme on Bitcoin
• TendrilStaller: Block Delay Attack in Bitcoin

CVE & InfoSec

• [p] CVE-2017-18350 disclosure (buffer overflow)
  • see also Bitcoin Core CVE-2017–18350 disclosure
• [p] Bech32 weakness and impact on bip-taproot addresses
  • see also How does the bech32 length-extension mutation weakness work?
• [p] Potential Minor Sphinx Privacy Leak and Patch
• [p] Bitcoin’s Block Timestamp Protection Rules
• [p] How Coinbase views proof of work security
• [p] Change theft attack against Trezor Model T ^*
• [p] Change ransom attack against ColdCard ^*
• 0-day for popular Android phones
• Insecure Shortcuts in MuSig ^*

Alts

• [p] Side-channel attacks on Zcash and Monero linking nodes with transactions ^*
  • Similar attacks exists against bitcoin (#16698 aims to fix this, more details)
• [p] Input-output linkability with MimbleWimble’s Dandelion ^*
  • Grin developers response
• [p] Binaries hijack on getmonero.org ^*
• Bitcoin Cash Hashrate Volatiility

Mailing Lists

lightning-dev

• [p] A proposal for up-front payments ^*
• [p] Payment points without 2p-ECDSA or Schnorr ^*

lnd

• New mailing list ^*

BIPs & specs

• [p] Stratum v2 (AMA) ^*

BIPs

• [p] BIP 179: Name for payment recipient identifiers
• [p] BIP ???: SNICKER (draft) ^*
• BIP 174 extensions
• BIP 325: Signet
• BIP 330: Transaction announcements reconciliation

BOLTs

• [p] (pending) Addressing Minor Sphinx privacy leak (#40, #697)
• BOLT 12: Lightning Offers protocol (discussion)
• BOLT 11: New optional vendor field (discussion)
• PR: Adding a new optional vendor property to BOLT 11 payment requests
• PR: Variable hop_payload for the sphinx onion
• Bolt 11 Diagram

LIPs

• [p] Litecoin MW extension blocks (LIP 002, LIP 003) ^*

Optech

• [p] Schnorr/taproot workshop
• [p] Topics Index
• Newsletter #72 & #73

Network Data & Tools

• [p] 2019 Bitcoin Node Performance Tests
• [p] Hut 8 Mining Corp Q3 Financial Report
• [p] txstats.com (announcement) ^*
• OXT Landscapes updated
• Bitcoin mining in Georgia
• Mempool monitor ^*

Pull Requests and repo updates

Bitcoin Core

• [p] Remove BIP70 support
• [p] Complete removal of OpenSSL 🍾 ^*
• [p] Add Android NDK support
• [p] UTXO snapshot creation (dumptxoutset)
• [p] fix uninitialized variable nMinerConfirmationWindow ^*
• Add generatetodescriptor RPC
• Merge settings one place instead of five places
  • see also Add settings.json persistent settings storage
  • see also Unify bitcoin-qt and bitcoind persistent settings
• Remove GetDepthInMainChain dependency on locked chain interface
  • see also Reverse cs_main, cs_wallet lock order and reduce cs_main locking
• Expose block height of wallet transactions via RPC

c-lightning

• [p] Release: v0.7.3: Bitcoin’s Proof of Stake
• [p] Fix potential Sphinx privacy data leak
• routing: last hop restriction ^*
• Multiple DB support for C-Lightning
• Postgres driver for backend DB
• JRPCLightning: Java Wrapper for C-Lightning RPC API
• Expose the channel close-to address via RPC
• hsmtool now built-in

lnd

• [p] Manually construct packets for simple multipath payment ^*
• Add ability to create new Macaroons
• Macaroon Entities and Actions
• Improve the probabilistic estimation for untried connections
• (pending) Allow custom data fields in the htlc payload
• Addressing Bitcoin Core 0.19 compatibility (#3625, #3649)

Eclair

• [p] Experimental support for multipath payments
• Creating and decrypting trampoline onions

Miscellaneous

• [p] Node Operator’s Guide to the Lightning Galaxy, Part 2: Node Scoring and Pathfinding
• [p] WhatSat: End-to-end encrypted, onion-routed, censorship-resistant, peer-to-peer instant messaging over Lightning
• [p] Polar: One-click Bitcoin Lightning networks for local app development & testing
• [p] c-lightning Plugins 04: The listpayments Plugin
• [p] c-lightning Plugins 05: Probe Plugin Results ^*
• [p] POWSWAP (actual explanation of the technical mechanism by Ruben Somsen) ^*
• [p] 0.5M UTXO cleanup ^*
• [p] Bitfinex support for bech32 withdrawals and deposits ^*
• [p] Want to Learn How to Contribute to Bitcoin? Try a ‘Good First Issue’ ^*
• RTL-Design: git workflow for design work on Ride The Lightning
• LSAT + Joule Demo
• Introducing Lightning Rod

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h/t: This seminar was inspired by BitDevs NYC and is based on the subject list for the BitDevs Socratic Seminar 98 (additions marked with ^*).