@provoost

Episode 86: Ocean Tides

Bitcoin Explained - The Technical Side of Bitcoin

  In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors explain what features are offered by Ocean, the relaunched and rebranded Eligius mining pool. They discuss how payouts from this pool are (partially) non-custodial, how the block template creation is fully transparent, and how payout distribution is determined. Aaron and Sjors also briefly touch on the &quot;spam&quot; filtering employed by Ocean, and how that potentially affects profitability of the pool.
Our new sponsor: https://coinkite.com/


@vake

Episode 85: Bitcoin Core 26.0 (And F2Pool’s OFAC Compliant Mining Policy)

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors explain what new features are included in the upcoming Bitcoin Core 0.26 release. They also briefly discuss recent developments concerning the transaction inclusion policy of mining pool F2Pool, which appears to have been compliant with the OFAC sanctions list.
Link to testing guide: https://github.com/bitcoin-core/bitcoin-devwiki/wiki/26.0-Release-Candidate-Testing-Guide


@unitofacc

@letter6173

@mrmr

Episode 50: The Mempool (And Why We Need It)

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss a recent thread on the Bitcoin development mailing list, titled “Death to the Mempool, Long Live the Mempool”.   In the thread, Blockstream engineer Lisa “niftynei” Neigut proposes to get rid of the memory pool (mempool): the collection of unconfirmed transactions that Bitcoin nodes use to share transactions over the network, and that Bitcoin miners use to create new blocks from. She argues that the Bitcoin system could be drastically simplified if users instead just send their transactions directly to miners (or mining pools).  In the episode, Aaron and Sjors explain how this would work, and why this is not as simple as it may sound. Based on the responses in the thread, they go over the reasons why getting rid of the mempool is in fact not a very good solution for a system like Bitcoin. Specifically, they discuss the implications on mining privacy and decentralization, while also exploring some other tradeoffs that would need to be made in order to make the Bitcoin system work without a mempool.   Finally, Sjors considers an idea that Aaron doesn’t understand.    --------------------------------------------- Bitcoin Magazine is back in print! Get Bitcoin Magazine shipped directly to your front door! Get 21% off with promo code: MAG21 https://store.bitcoinmagazine.com/discount/MAG21?redirect=%2Fproducts%2Fbitcoin-magazine-annual-subscription  "The Deep Dive" delivers the latest Bitcoin on-chain market intelligence directly to your inbox! Check it out for free here! deepdivebtc.substack.com/welcome  Bitcoin 2022 will be the biggest Bitcoin conference ever! Miami, FL from April 6–9, 2022 Get 15% off tickets with promo code: MAG21 https://b.tc/conference/ 


Episode 84: Marathon Pool’s Invalid Block (And Some Updates About the Show)

  In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors discuss an invalid block mined by Marathon Pool. They explain why the block was invalid, what caused it (and what didn’t), and why that didn’t affect the Bitcoin network.  
Aaron and Sjors also provide some updates about the show, and what that means moving forward.  
Finally, Sjors briefly mentions some notable Bitcoin Core updates that were recently merged.  
For more information on the invalid block, also see: https://b10c.me/observations/07-invalid-block-809478/


@thebullishbitcoiner

Three Limitations of BOLT11

Episode 44: BOLT 12

What is a Lightning invoice?

@michaelmatulef

@podcastlistener

Episode 83: The Milk Sad Vulnerability

In this episode, Aaron (@AaronvanW) and Sjors (@provoost) discuss a vulnerability in Libbitcoin dubbed “Milk Sad”, which allowed people to generate private key seeds with such weak entropy that their private keys could be brute forced and their coins stolen. Aaron and Sjors examine how this vulnerability (could have) ended up in Libbitcoin as well as in Andreas Antonopoulos’ book Mastering Bitcoin, to what extent it should be considered a bug, and more.For more information on Milk Sad, see: https://milksad.info/Libbitcoin lead developer Eric Voskuil on Milk Sad: https://youtu.be/3uwl5xDdc7c

Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425

THIS EPISODE’S SPONSORS:
⁠Voltage Cloud⁠
⁠Bitcoin 2024 Nashville⁠
⁠Bitcoin Magazine⁠
⁠Bitcoin Amsterdam⁠

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Episode 82: Scaling to Billions of Users

In this episode, Aaron (@AaronvanW) and Sjors (@provoost) discuss a recent blog post by Bitcoin Core developer Anthony Towns (@ajtowns), “Putting the B in BTC”, in which he outlines a vision for scaling Bitcoin to facilitate billions of users. As Aaron and Sjors walk through the article, they explain what some of Towns’ proposed solutions are, and which tradeoffs they entail.Link to the blog post: https://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2023/06/21/putting-the-b-in-btc

Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425

THIS EPISODE’S SPONSORS:
Voltage Cloud
Bitcoin 2024 Nashville
Bitcoin Magazine
Bitcoin Amsterdam

Lower your time preference and lock-in your BITCOIN 2024 conference tickets today! Use the code BMLIVE for a 10% Discount!  - https://b.tc/conference/2024



@lonerookie

  In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors explain what features are offered by Ocean, the relaunched and rebranded Eligius mining pool. They discuss how payouts from this pool are (partially) non-custodial, how the block template creation is fully transparent, and how payout distribution is determined. Aaron and Sjors also briefly touch on the &quot;spam&quot; filtering employed by Ocean, and how that potentially affects profitability of the pool.
Our new sponsor: https://coinkite

  In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors discuss an invalid block mined by Marathon Pool. They explain why the block was invalid, what caused it (and what didn’t), and why that didn’t affect the Bitcoin network.  
Aaron and Sjors also provide some updates about the show, and what that means moving forward.  
Finally, Sjors briefly mentions some notable Bitcoin Core updates that were recently merged.  
For more information on the invalid block, also see: https://b10c.me/observatio

In this episode, Aaron (@AaronvanW) and Sjors (@provoost) discuss a vulnerability in Libbitcoin dubbed “Milk Sad”, which allowed people to generate private key seeds with such weak entropy that their private keys could be brute forced and their coins stolen. Aaron and Sjors examine how this vulnerability (could have) ended up in Libbitcoin as well as in Andreas Antonopoulos’ book Mastering Bitcoin, to what extent it should be considered a bug, and more.For more information on Milk Sad, see: http

In this episode, Aaron (@AaronvanW) and Sjors (@provoost) discuss a recent blog post by Bitcoin Core developer Anthony Towns (@ajtowns), “Putting the B in BTC”, in which he outlines a vision for scaling Bitcoin to facilitate billions of users. As Aaron and Sjors walk through the article, they explain what some of Towns’ proposed solutions are, and which tradeoffs they entail.Link to the blog post: https://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2023/06/21/putting-the-b-in-btc

Sjors New Book: https://www.a

In this episode, Aaron (@AaronvanW) and Sjors (@provoost) discuss Bitcoin Core 25.0, the latest major release of the Bitcoin Core software. They highlight four of the most notable changes: performance improvements concerning huge transaction loads, further Miniscript integration, a faster wallet re-scan, and the decreased 65-byte transaction limit policy rule.

For further reading on the reasoning behind 65-byte policy rule, also see: https://bitslog.com/2018/06/09/leaf-node-weakness-in-bitcoin-

Episode 81: Bitcoin Core 25.0

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron (@AaronvanW) and Sjors (@provoost) are joined by Braiins co-founder Jan Čapek (@janbraiins), who has been leading the initiative to upgrade pooled mining to the Stratum V2 protocol. Aaron, Sjors and Jan discuss what pooled mining is, how the Stratum protocol helps with that, and in what ways Stratum V2 is an improvement over Stratum V1.

Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/


Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjor

Episode 80: Stratum V2

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron (@AaronvanW) and Sjors (@provoost) explain why the witness discount was included in the Segregated Witness protocol upgrade from 2017, why this discount is 75%, and why this discount still makes sense in today’s world where Inscriptions benefit from it.

Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/

Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425

Lower your time preference and lock-in your BITCOIN 2024 con

Episode 79: The Witness Discount

Bitcoin, Explained 79: The Witness Discount

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron (@AaronvanW) and Sjors (@provoost) explain Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (PSBTs), discussing what problems they solve, how they work, and some of the ways they are used. In the last part of the episode, the hosts zoom in on one particular PSBT use case called Dutch Auctions, which Bitcoin Magazine recently used to sell ordinals.

Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/

Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors

Episode 78: Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (PSBTs) (And Dutch Auctions)

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors discuss BIP 324, the proposal by Dhruv, Pieter Wuille and Tim Ruffing to add peer-to-peer (P2P) encryption to the Bitcoin protocol. They explain why this is needed, how it would work, and which problems it would, and wouldn’t solve.

Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/

Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425

Don&#39;t miss out on the biggest Bitcoin event of the year! B23 in Mia

Episode 77: Peer-to-peer Encryption

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors explain Stamps, a new(?) protocol to upload images onto the Bitcoin blockchain, which end up in the UTXO set.

To learn more about some of the concepts mentioned in this episode, also check out episode 15 (Utreexo), episode 61 (OP_RETURN), episode 72 (Inscriptions) and episode 75 (Multisig).

Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/

Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425

Don&#39;t m

Episode 76: Stamps (And the Invalid Block Caused by It)

Bitcoin, Explained 76: Stamps (And the Invalid Block Caused by It)

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors discuss multi-signature (multisig), and the various ways that Bitcoin enables multisig; from bare multisig, to P2SH, SegWit, Taproot, and finally Musig, as well as some potential future solutions.


Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/


Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425


Don&#39;t miss out on the biggest Bitcoin event of the year! B23 in Miami is coming up fast, get your ti

Episode 75: Multisig (And Musig)

Bitcoin, Explained 75: Multisig (And Musig)

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors explain pay-to-script-hash (P2SH), which allows bitcoin to be sent to and from the hash of a script. Besides (the current implementation of) P2SH itself, Aaron and Sjors also discuss some alternatives that were proposed around the time that P2SH was adopted in 2012.
For further reading on the history of P2SH, also see "The Battle for P2SH: The Untold History of Bitcoin’s First War"
Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/
Sjors New Book: http

Episode 74: Pay-to-Script-Hash (P2SH)

Bitcoin, Explained 74: P2SH

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors explain OP_VAULT, a proposed op code that would enable an elegant type of vaults through Bitcoin’s scripting language.
For more information, also see:
https://jameso.be/vaults.pdf
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/c589490f98ba1b0c606d0e2030463f1fde54b786/bip-vaults.mediawiki
===
Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/
Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425
Don't miss out on the bi

Episode 73: OP_VAULT

Bitcoin, Explained 73: OP_VAULT

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors explain Inscriptions, a new method to upload arbitrary data onto the Bitcoin blockchain.
Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/
Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425
Don't miss out on the biggest Bitcoin event of the year! B23 in Miami is coming up fast, get your tickets now!
Lower your time preference and lock-in your BITCOIN 2023 conference tickets today! Use the code BMLIVE for 

Episode 72: Inscriptions

Bitcoin, Explained 72: Inscriptions

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors discuss the different types of timelocks available on Bitcoin (and what can go wrong when used incorrectly).
Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/
Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425
Lower your time preference and lock-in your Bitcoin 2023 conference tickets today!!! Use promo code BMLIVE to save 10% off your conference tickets today!!!
https://b.tc/conference/bitcoin2023
Follow

Episode 71: Timelocks

Bitcoin, Explained 71: Timelocks

Aaron and Sjors explain how a wallet bug crept into the Bitcoin Core 24.0 release, and why there is now a Bitcoin Core version 24.0.1 available. &nbsp;
Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/&nbsp;
Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425
Lower your time preference and lock-in your Bitcoin 2023 conference tickets today!!!&nbsp;
Use promo code BMLIVE to save 10% off your conference tickets today!!! https://b.tc/conference/bitcoin2023&nbsp;


Episode 70: The Bitcoin Core 24.0 Bug (Or Why There Is a Bitcoin Core 24.0.1 Release)

Bitcoin Explained 70: Bitcoin Core v24 Bug

Aaron and Sjors explain what happened in the pro forma hearing concerning the trial against Alexy Pertsev, one of the developers behind the Ethereum-based Tornado Cash mixer. While this means that this episode dives more into the domain of Ethereum smart contracts and Dutch law, Aaron and Sjors do discuss the ongoing case from a Bitcoin perspective.

THIS EPISODE’S SPONSORS:
Voltage - https://voltage.cloud/
Bitcoin 2023 Miami -&nbsp;https://b.tc/conference/
Bitcoin Magazine -&nbsp;https://store.

Episode 69: The Tornado Cash Trial

Bitcoin, Explained 69: The Tornado Cash Trial

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost revisit replace-by-fee (RBF). As they mentioned in Bitcoin, Explained episode 65, the upcoming Bitcoin Core release — Bitcoin Core 24.0 — includes the option to switch on “full RBF”, but this has caused some commotion in the Bitcoin community since the recording of that episode. Aaron and Sjors explain what this commotion has been about, and they highlight some of the new arguments for and against (full) RBF.  RBF h

Episode 68: Full Replace-By-Fee (RBF) in Bitcoin Core 24.0

Bitcoin, Explained 68: RBF In Bitcoin Core 24.0

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost speak with Sam Wouters, a research analyst at River Financial. River operates the fourth largest node on the Lightning network, and Sam recently published a report detailing unique insights from this Lightning node.  At the start of the episode, Sjors first gives a brief update on the bug that brought down LND nodes, discussed in episode 66. He confirms that his assessment of the cause was correct, and explains that

Episode 67: Insights From the Fourth Largest Lightning Network Node

Bitcoin, Explained 67: Insights From the 4th Largest Lightning Network Node

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss a recent bug in the btcd Bitcoin implementation that affected a large part of the Lightning network, as it disconnected lnd Lightning nodes from the Bitcoin blockchain.   In the episode, Aaron and Sjors explain that a developer going by the name Burak on Twitter created a 998-of-999 multisig transaction by leveraging Taproot. Although this was a valid transaction, btcd and lnd nodes rejected it, and therefor

Episode 66: The BTCD Bug That Brought Down LND Nodes

Bitcoin, Explained 66: The BTCD Bug That Brought Down LND Nodes

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss the upcoming Bitcoin Core major release, Bitcoin Core 24.0.  The Bitcoin Core project produces a new major release of its software roughly every six months. The 24th major release is currently in its release candidate phase, which means that it is being tested and could technically be released any day now (though this phase will probably last a few more weeks). In the episode, Aaron and Sjors discuss seven o

Episode 65: Bitcoin Core 24.0

Bitcoin, Explained 65: Bitcoin Core 24.0

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) Wallets, mnemonic codes, and — especially — the new SeedQR format which allows users to store their mnemonic codes as QR codes. Aaron and Sjors start the episode by recapping what HD Wallets (also known as private key seeds) are, and why they are preferred over regular private key backups. Next, they briefly explain why mnemonic codes (also known as seed phrases) are a popular

Episode 64: HD Wallets, Mnemonic Codes and SeedQR

Bitcoin, Explained 64: HD Wallets, Mnemonic codes and SeedQR

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss the Bitcoin Core development process, and more specifically, the different roles that are involved in this process. At the start of the episode, Aaron and Sjors explain what Bitcoin Core is, both in a practical sense as well as in a more definitional sense, and they touch on some slightly different ideas about this as well. Aaron and Sjors then go on to explain the roles of three distinct types of Bitcoin Co

Episode 63: The Bitcoin Core Development Process

Bitcoin, Explained 63: The Bitcoin Core development process

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost go back to basics. They explain one of the most fundamental building blocks in all of Bitcoin: hash functions. To start the episode off, Aaron and Sjors explain that hash functions are a type of mathematical one-way functions. That means that they can easily convert one piece of data into another piece of data, a hash, but anyone who knows only this hash can not convert it back to the original data. Additionally, a 

Episode 62: Hash Functions

Bitcoin, Explained 62: Hash functions

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss OP_RETURN and what some have called the “OP_RETURN wars”. More specifically, they discuss a blog post by BitMEX research titled: “The OP_Return Wars of 2014 – Dapps Vs Bitcoin Transactions”. Aaron and Sjors start off by explaining that OP_RETURN is an op code (a piece of code for Bitcoin transactions) that will render invalid any transaction that includes it in an input. This means that outputs that include 

Episode 61: OP_RETURN (And the ‘OP_RETURN Wars’)

OP RETURN Wars - Episode 61

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss reusing Bitcoin addresses. More specifically, they explain why reusing Bitcoin addresses is a bad idea.  Reusing Bitcoin addresses is a bad idea for roughly three reasons. The first two of these are that it harms privacy and impedes on the censorship resistance of Bitcoin. In the episode, Aaron and Sjors go over a couple examples of how such a loss of privacy and censorship resistance can negatively affect B

Episode 60: Reusing Addresses (and the Hertzbleed Attack)

Reusing addresses and the Hertzbleed attack - Episode 60

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss a recent blog post by James Lopp titled, “Has Bitcoin Ever Hard Forked”?   Hard forks are generally defined as Bitcoin protocol upgrades that remove or loosen rules, making these types of upgrades backwards-incompatible. Aaron and Sjors explain, however, that Lopp in his blog post argues that this definition isn’t very precise and suggests the term should only apply if the rule change was actually utilized. 

Episode 59: Hard Forks (And Whether Bitcoin Has Ever Hard Forked)

Has Bitcoin Ever Hard Forked? - Episode 59

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost welcome Ruben Somsen back on the show to talk about a recent proposal of his called “Silent Payments”.   Silent Payments resemble earlier ideas like Stealth Addresses and Reusable Payment Codes, in that they allow users to publish a static “address”, while this is not the actual Bitcoin address they will be paid on. Instead, senders of a transaction can use this static address to generate new Bitcoin addresses for t

Episode 58: Silent Payments

Silent Payments - Episode 58

   In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss URSFs, which stands for either User Rejected Soft Forks or User Resisted Soft Forks, depending on who you ask. URSFs are a recently introduced tool in Bitcoin’s upgrade mechanism toolkit.  In the first part of the episode, Aaron and Sjors explain that URSFs are best considered the mirror equivalent of UASFs (User Activated Soft Forks) with mandated signaling. Where UASFs will towards the end of a soft for

Episode 57: User Rejected Soft Forks (URSFs)

URSFs (User Rejected Soft Forks) - Episode 57

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss Bitcoin Core 23.0, the upcoming major release of Bitcoin's de facto reference implementation. The duo highlights some of the most notable changes in this new software client, and they offer a bit of extra context about the release as well.  At the time of recording this episode, Bitcoin Core 23.0 was still going through the release candidate phase, where the software is tested for bugs; Aaron and Sjors start

Episode 56: Bitcoin Core 23.0

Bitcoin Core 23.0 - Episode 56

 In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss research done by CasaHODL co-founder and CTO Jameson Lopp as well as Sjors himself on syncing old Bitcoin nodes.   Whenever a new Bitcoin node comes online, it must first sync with the rest of the Bitcoin network: it needs to download and verify the entire blockchain up until the most recent block in order to be up to date on the state of bitcoin ownership. This can take quite a while, however, and should t

Episode 55: Syncing Old Nodes

Syncing Old Bitcoin nodes - Episode 55

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost revisit the Taproot activation saga, this time to discuss burying of soft forks.   Taproot, the last soft fork to have been deployed on the Bitcoin network, activated in late 2021. Now, Bitcoin Core developers are considering to “bury” the soft fork, which means that future Bitcoin Core releases will treat Taproot as if the rule change has been active since Bitcoin’s very beginning. (With the exception of one block 

Episode 54: Burying Soft Forks

Burying Soft Forks - Episode 54

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost are joined by resident sidechain and Layer Two expert Ruben Somsen again, this time to discuss Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs).  Discreet Log Contracts are a type of smart contracts for Bitcoin, first proposed by Lightning Network white paper coauthor Tadge Dryja. In essence, DLCs are a way to perform bets— but this means that they can ultimately be leveraged for all sorts of financial instruments, including futures m

Episode 53: Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs)

Discreet Log Contracts - Episode 53

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost are once again joined by resident sidechain and Layer Two expert Ruben Somsen, this time to discuss Federated Ecash, a project that has since October 2021 been sponsored by Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream. In the episode, Aaron, Sjors and Ruben discuss the history and design of Ecash, a pioneering digital cash project developed by cryptographer David Chaum and his startup Digicash in the early 1990s. The 

Episode 52: Federated eCash

Federated Ecash - Episode 52

Hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost are back from their travel break for a brand new episode of Bitcoin, Explained! In this episode, they explain how Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer network is made more efficient and fast with Compact Blocks.  Compact blocks are — as the name suggests — compact versions of Bitcoin blocks, that have been used by Bitcoin Core nodes since version 0.13. Compact Blocks contain the minimal amount of data required for Bitcoin nodes to reconstruct entire blocks. Most notab

Episode 51: Compact Blocks

Compact Blocks - Episode 51

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss a recent thread on the Bitcoin development mailing list, titled “Death to the Mempool, Long Live the Mempool”.   In the thread, Blockstream engineer Lisa “niftynei” Neigut proposes to get rid of the memory pool (mempool): the collection of unconfirmed transactions that Bitcoin nodes use to share transactions over the network, and that Bitcoin miners use to create new blocks from. She argues that the Bitcoin 

Death To The Mempool, Long Live The Mempool - Episode 50

Bitcoin was under attack! It’s the story the mainstream media won’t tell you!   Hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost finally met in Utrecht again to record Bitcoin, Explained. In this episode, they discuss a recent attack on the Bitcoin network, where some nodes were flooding peers with fake IP-addresses.   As previously discussed in episode 13, Bitcoin nodes connect to peers on the network through IP-addresses, which they learn from their existing peers. Nodes on the network essentially sh

Episode 49: The Attack of the Fake Peers!

The Fake Peers Attack! - Episode 49

In this episode of “Bitcoin Explained,” host Sjors Provoost and guest Christian Decker discussed SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT, a proposed new sighash flag that would enable a cleaner version of the Lightning Network and other Layer 2 protocols. Sighash flags are included in Bitcoin transactions to indicate which part of the transaction is signed by the required private keys, exactly. This can be (almost) the entire transaction, or specific parts of it. Signing only specific parts allows for some flexibili

Episode 48: SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT and Eltoo part 2

Lightning Network Upgrades (Eltoo + SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT) with Christian Decker - Episode 48

In this episode of Bitcoin Explained, (formerly known as The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado) host Sjors Provoost is joined by Rene Pickhardt to discuss Rene’s paper “Optimally Reliable & Cheap Payment Flows on the Lightning Network”. Rene has spent the last two years researching the reliability of the lightning network, and the reliability of the payment process. They discuss the design principles of the lightning network, the difficulties with routing payments on lightning, probing channel balances, and 

Episode 47: Lightning Network Payment Flows

Lightning Network Channel Payments with Rene Pickhardt - Episode 47

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained (formerly known as The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado) hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss the Chivo application, the Bitcoin wallet, and payment terminal provided by the government of El Salvador. This episode is a little bit different from other episodes of Bitcoin, Explained, because the Chivo app is closed source software. Instead of analyzing the source code and design of the application, Aaron and Sjors have to rely on Aaron’s personal experience w

Episode 46: The Chivo App (First Look)

A First Look at the Chivo App - Episode 46

The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado has rebranded, and is now called Bitcoin, Explained! In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss Bitcoin Core 22.0, the latest major release of the Bitcoin Core software client, currently the de facto reference implementation of the Bitcoin protocol. Aaron and Sjors highlight several improvements to the Bitcoin Core software. The first of these is hardware wallet support in the graphical user interface (GUI). While hardware wa

Episode 45: Bitcoin Core 22.0

Bitcoin Core 22.0 Explained - Episode 45

Sjors is back! In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss BOLT 12 (Basis of Lightning Technology 12), a newly proposed Lightning Network specification for “offers”, a type of “meta invoices” designed by c-lightning developer Rusty Russell. Where coins on Bitcoin’s base layer are sent to addresses, the Lightning network uses invoices. Invoices communicate the requested amount, node destination, and the hash of a secret which is used for payment 

Basis of Lightning Technology 12 - NADO 44

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Aaron van Wirdum hosts one more interview without his regular cohost Sjors Provoost. Instead, he is joined by Blockstream’s Lawrence Nahum, one of the developers behind the Jade wallet, and Ben Kaufman, one of the developers of the Spectre wallet, which is specifically designed to work with hardware wallets. Aaron, Lawrence and Ben talk about what hardware wallets are, and discuss the design tradeoffs that different hardware wallets have taken by focu

Episode 43: Hardware Wallets and Blockstream’s Jade Wallet

Hardware Wallets and Blockstream’s Jade wallet - NADO 43

A Bitcoin Beach special! In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado host Aaron van Wirdum speaks with Bitcoin Beach Wallet developer Nicolas Burtey — without cohost Sjors Provoost this time. Aaron and Nicolas met up in El Zonte, El Salvador — which has been dubbed Bitcoin Beach — to discuss the Bitcoin Beach Wallet, a Bitcoin and Lightning wallet specifically designed for use in the small Central American coastal town frequented by surfers and, now, bitcoiners. Aaron and Nicolas discuss the pro

Episode 42: The Bitcoin Beach Wallet (Bitcoin Beach Special)

The Bitcoin Beach Wallet - NADO 42 (Bitcoin Beach Special)

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost are joined by Lightning developer Joost Jager to discuss everything about Lightning Network routing. The Lightning Network — Bitcoin’s Layer Two protocol for fast and cheap payments — consists of a network of payments channels. Each payment channel exists between two Lightning users. But even if two users don’t have a payment channel between themselves directly, they can pay each other though one or several ot

Episode 41: Lightning Network Routing

Lightning Network Routing - NADO 41

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss the lock-in of the Taproot soft fork upgrade. As discussed in previous episodes, Taproot is a Bitcoin protocol upgrade that will make smart contracts more compact, private and flexible. Aaron and Sjors also discussed the Taproot upgrade process in prior episodes, including the Speedy Trial activation method adopted by Bitcoin Core. About a week ago, the Speedy Trial signaling threshold was reached, whi

Episode 40: Taproot Activation part 5: Lock-in

Taproot Lock-in - NADO 40

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost explain what Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) are, and how the BIP process works. They discuss why the BIP process is a useful, yet non-binding convention within Bitcoin’s technical community. Aaron and Sjors start off by explaining what a BIP is exactly— and what it is not. They also explain that only improvements to Bitcoin software that affects other projects require a BIP. The two go on to dive into th

Episode 39: The Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) Process

How the Bitcoin Improvement Process Works - NADO 39

In this Episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss CVE-2021-31876, a bug in the Bitcoin Core code that affects replace-by-fee (RBF) child transactions. The CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) system offers an overview of publicly known software bugs. A newly discovered bug in the Bitcoin Core code was recently discovered and disclosed by Antoine Riard, and added to the CVE overview. Aaron and Sjors explain that the bug affects how RBF logic is h

Episode 38: The Replace-By-Fee Bug Affecting Child Transactions In Bitcoin Core

Replace-by-Fee Bug - NADO 38

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss the emergence of Mara Pool, the American Bitcoin mining pool operated by Marathon Digital Holdings, which claims to be fully compliance with US regulations. More generally, Aaron and Sjors discuss the prospects of mining censorship, what that would mean for Bitcoin, and what can be done about it. Mara Pool claims to be fully compliant with US regulations, which means it applies anti-money laundering (A

Episode 37: MaraPool and Mining Censorship

Mara Pool and Mining Censorship - NADO 37

The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado 36 — Speedy Trial And The LOT=True Client   In this episode of “The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado,” hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discussed the final implementation details of Speedy Trial, the Taproot activation mechanism included in Bitcoin Core 0.21.1. Van Wirdum and Provoost also compared Speedy Trial to the alternative BIP 8 LOT=true activation client. After more than a year of deliberation, the Bitcoin Core project has merged Speedy Trial as the (first) activati

Episode 36: Taproot Activation part 4: Speedy Trial and the LOT=true Client

Taproot Activation Update: Speedy Trial And The LOT=True Client - NADO 36

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT, a proposed new sighash flag that would enable a cleaner version of the Lightning Network and other Layer Two protocols.Sighash flags are included in Bitcoin transactions to indicate which part of the transaction is signed by the required private keys, exactly. This can be (almost) the entire transaction, or specific parts of it. Signing only specific parts allows for some flexibilit

Episode 35: SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT and Eltoo

SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT and Eltoo - NADO 35

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss the Erlay protocol. Erlay is a proposal to reduce the bandwidth required to run a Bitcoin node, which has been proposed and developed by University of British Columbia researchers Gleb Naumenko, Alexandra Fedorova and Ivan Beschastnikh; Blockstream engineer Pieter Wuille; and independent Bitcoin Core contributor Gregory Maxwell. Bitcoin nodes use bandwidth to receive and transmit both block data as wel

Episode 34: Erlay

Scaling Bitcoin With The Erlay Protocol - NADO 34

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost are once again joined by Ruben Somsen. The trio discusses RGB tokens, a Layer Two protocol for Bitcoin to support alternative currency and token schemes (like the currently popular non-fungible tokens, or NFTs). Aaron, Sjors and Ruben explain that the Bitcoin blockchain has been (ab)used by users to host data since the project’s early days. This was initially done through otherwise-useless transaction outputs,

Episode 33: RGB

Explaining RGB Tokens - NADO 33

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss Segregated Witness, also known as SegWit. SegWit was the last soft fork to have been activated on the Bitcoin network in the summer of 2017, and the biggest Bitcoin protocol upgrade to date. In short, SegWit allowed transaction data and signature data to be separated in Bitcoin blocks. In this episode, Aaron and Sjors explain how this works, and that this offered four main benefits: First, SegWit solve

Episode 32: Segregated Witness (SegWit)

Segregated Witness (SegWit) - NADO 32

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss Speedy Trial, the proposed Taproot activation mechanism that has been gaining traction in recent weeks. Aaron and Sjors explain that Speedy Trial would give miners three months to signal support for the Taproot upgrade with their hash power. If a supermajority of miners signal support for the upgrade within these thee months, Taproot will activate a couple of months later: six months since the release 

Episode 31: Taproot Activation part 3: Speedy Trial

Taproot Activation with Speedy Trial - NADO 31

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss hardware wallet integration into Bitcoin Core, one of the ongoing projects that Sjors regularly contributes to himself. Hardware wallets are a popular solution for storing private keys offline, to minimize the risk that hackers gain access to the corresponding coins. They are used in combination with regular software wallets to sign transactions in such a way that the private keys never leave the devic

Episode 30: Hardware Wallet Integration in Bitcoin Core and the Hardware Wallet Interface (HWI)

Hardware Wallet Integration in Bitcoin Core and HWI - NADO 30

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss activation of the Taproot soft fork upgrade, and more specifically, the lock-in on timeout (LOT) parameter. The LOT parameter can be set to either “true” (LOT=true) or “false” (LOT=false). LOT=false resembles how several previous soft forks were activated. Miners would have one year to coordinate Taproot activation through hash power; if and when a supermajority (probably 90 percent) of miners signal r

Episode 29: Taproot Activation part 2: LOT=true Versus LOT=false

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In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss Bitcoin addresses. Every Bitcoin user has probably at one point used Bitcoin addresses, but what are they, exactly? Aaron and Sjors explain that Bitcoin addresses are not part of the Bitcoin protocol. Instead, they are conventions used by Bitcoin (wallet) software to communicate where coins must be spent to: either a public key (P2PK), a public key hash (P2PKH), a script hash (P2SH), a witness public k

Episode 28: Bitcoin Addresses

Explaining Bitcoin Addresses - NADO 28

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost are once again joined by Ruben Somsen. This time, they discuss one of Ruben’s own proposals, called Softchains. Softchains are a type of two-way peg sidechains that utilize a new type of consensus mechanism: proof-of-work fraud proofs (or as Sjors prefers to call them, proof-of-work fraud indicators). Using this consensus mechanism, users don’t validate the content of each block, but instead only check the pro

Episode 27: Softchains

Softchains — NADO 27

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss Replace By Fee (RBF). RBF is a trick that lets unconfirmed transactions be replaced by conflicting transactions that include a higher fee. With RBF, users can essentially bump a transaction fee to incentivize miners to include the transaction in a block. Aaron and Sjors explain three advantages of RBF: the option the “speed up” a transaction (1), which can in turn result in a more effective fee market 

Episode 26: Replace-By-Fee (RBF)

Replace By Fee (RBF) — NADO 26

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss Compact Client Side Filtering, also known as Neutrino. Compact Client Side Filtering is a solution to use Bitcoin without needing to download and validate the entire blockchain, and without sacrificing your privacy to someone who operates a full node (and therefore did download and validate the entire blockchain). Downloading and validating the entire Bitcoin blockchain can take a couple of days even o

Episode 25: Compact Client-Side Block Filters (Neutrino)

Compact Client Side Filtering (Neutrino) — The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado 25

In this episode of “The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado,” hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss the newly released Bitcoin Core 0.21.0. Bitcoin Core 0.21.0 is the 21st and latest major release of the Bitcoin Core software, the oldest and most important Bitcoin node implementation, which is often also regarded as the reference implementation for the Bitcoin protocol. Follow Aaron van Wirdum @AaronvanW Follow Sjors Provoost @provoost Follow Bitcoin Magazine @BitcoinMagazine


Episode 24: Bitcoin Core 0.21.0

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In this episode of “The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado,” hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost are once again joined by Ruben Somsen. The trio discusses Drivechain, a sidechain project spearheaded by Paul Sztorc.Sidechains are alternative blockchains, where coins are pegged to bitcoin. This should make the sidechain coins interchangeable with bitcoin and therefore carry an equal value. In a way, sidechains let users “move” bitcoin across blockchains, where they are subject to different protocol rules,

Episode 23: Drivechain

Drivechain — NADO 23

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss the basics of the Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s Layer 2 protocol for cheaper, faster and potentially more private transactions.
