Optech's "Changing Consensus" monthly segment always makes for an interesting recap podcast
View quoted note →
schmidty
npub1zsu6...k4em
#bitcoin blocking and tackling at @bitcoinoptech. cypherpunks write checks at @bitcoinbrink. Party planner @bitcoincoreorg.
There is a lot going on in the OP_RETURN debate, but I definitely agree with this:
"What the OP_RETURN debate has demonstrated is that Bitcoin Core and the Bitcoin technical community have not done a good job communicating their value – not to mention the rationale behind their decisions – to the average bitcoin user."
The Bitcoin Core developers have produced artifacts and content on these matters already, but those of us closely observing need to do a better job of disseminating that information to a broader set of Bitcoin ecosystem participants.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
I need to do better.
OP_RETURN debate: influencers vs. devs - Blockspace Media
Is there a way to stream video via RTMP to nostr?
Which way, quantum Bitcoiner?


After years of contributing to Bitcoin on nights and weekends, Sebastian Falbesoner has left his job to focus 100% of his time on Bitcoin open source development.
"After years of contributing part-time, I'm thrilled to fully commit myself to improving the Bitcoin ecosystem. A big thanks to Brink for providing the ideal environment to make this dream a reality! 🫡 " - Sebastian
Brink is proud to enable Sebastian's move to full time, but the credit goes to our supporters.
Thank you Samara Asset Group, Lightspark, Stakwork, Ledger, Bitwise, VanEck, and Jack Dorsey whose multi-year pledges show engineers that open source development can be a sustainable career!


Brink just received our first donation from a Bitcoin Donor-Advised Fund.
The donation was in BTC and made using a multisig onchain transaction.
This donation was made through Unchained's Bitcoin DAF and will be held in our reserves to fund Bitcoin development into the future.
🚀
Brink is excited to announce that Eugene Siegel has joined us as an open source engineer working on fuzz testing and Bitcoin Core development!
With a background as a security engineer working on Lightning and already disclosing multiple Bitcoin Core security vulnerabilities, we're excited for Eugene to help ensure the long-term security, resilience & decentralization of Bitcoin.
Welcome Eugene!

With a background as a security engineer working on Lightning and already disclosing multiple Bitcoin Core security vulnerabilities, we're excited for Eugene to help ensure the long-term security, resilience & decentralization of Bitcoin.
Welcome Eugene!

Welcoming Eugene Siegel
Eugene Siegel has joined Brink as an engineer to work on fuzz testing and Bitcoin Core development.
Today we celebrate Hennadii Stepanov's 4 year anniversary as a Bitcoin Core engineer at Brink 🎉
From a simple fixup because of an old laptop, to one of the most prolific contributors to Bitcoin Core today...
Whether that is the build system, operating system compatibility, the GUI, or language translations, hebasto’s efforts have been aimed at making Bitcoin secure, accessible, and user-friendly.
Hebasto led a project to migrate the build system to a modern, CMake-based one, enhancing efficiency and paving the way for future development. The migration to CMake took nearly 300 pull requests, a dozen people, and two years of review and testing.
Since his initial contribution, hebasto has 1800+ (!) commits to his name.
But it isn't just his own work...in the last year alone hebasto also provided nearly 1,700 review comments.
Brink and the Bitcoin community are lucky to have hebasto on our team.
Thank you for your open source #Bitcoin contributions, Hennadii 🚀

Celebrating Hennadii’s First Brink Epoch
This month, we’re excited to celebrate a significant milestone—Hennadii Stepanov’s (hebasto) four-year anniversary as an open source Bitcoin ...

Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #319
This week’s newsletter summarizes a proposal for allowing Stratum v2 pool miners to receive compensation for the transaction fees contained in th...
GitHub
Contributors to bitcoin/bitcoin
Bitcoin Core integration/staging tree. Contribute to bitcoin/bitcoin development by creating an account on GitHub.
Moisturized. Unbothered. In his lane. Flourishing. 

What is coming in Bitcoin Core 29.0?
Demand Pool is deploying Cluster Mempool to production soon?
What happens with no checkpoints in Bitcoin Core? View quoted note →
Podcast platforms used by Bitcoin Optech listeners. Pretty unusual stats, I'd think 

Making the Presidio Bitcoin Pilgrimage this week.
Come say hi if you're there on Thursday or for SF Bitdevs!
Simanta Gautam joined Brink engineers to discuss SNARKS, ZK Rollups & BitVM2 in a Bitcoin context:
- Verifiable compute w/SNARKS
- 2-way pegs, bridges, BitVM, trust minimization
- Bitcoin's state machine
- Sovereign ZK rollups
- Use cases


Simanta Gautam from Alpen Labs on ZK Rollups
Simanta Gautam from Alpen Labs presents on SNARKS, ZK Rollups, and BitVM2.
Brink is happy to announce a $50,000 contribution to our open source Bitcoin development efforts from VanEck!
Thank you to VanEck for supporting open source 🧡


Brink is grateful to receive a $50,000 contribution, in BTC, from Bitwise, to support our Bitcoin open source development work.
Bitwise donated $150,000 across Brink, HRF, and OpenSats for Bitcoin open source developers.
Thank you to @Hong Kim , Hunter Horsley, and the Bitwise team for supporting Bitcoin open source! 🧡


"Open Source Software and Corporate Influence"
Open Source Software and Corporate Influence — Andrew Lilley Brinker
Is it the longest weekly optech newsletter? View quoted note →
"For a sixth year running, regular Bitcoin Core contributors received a survey to surface priorities and ensure that people feel that they can contribute effectively. Below is a summary of the results in a format similar to previous years’ surveys."
PRs Opened and Merged by Year
Regarding Goals/Priorities for 2025
Areas of frustration/disappointment in 2024
Changes to improve the process/project
Check out the the full post:
Thanks @Jonas for putting this together

Areas of frustration/disappointment in 2024
Changes to improve the process/project
Check out the the full post:

Bitcoin is for all of us
Bitcoin CoreDev reflections 2024-2025
For a sixth year running, regular Bitcoin Core contributors received a survey to surface priorities and ensure that people feel that they can contr...
If you’ve thought about contributing to Bitcoin open source, I cannot recommend enough applying for the ‘Start your career in Bitcoin open source’ program.
The lowest risk path to contribute to the projects you use, know, and love: Bitcoin Core, Lightning, BDK, rust-bitcoin, and more
It's a 2 month, online program that is completely FREE (thank you, Chaincode)
Don't wait another year. Don't wait to watch another couple Bitcoin development YT videos
Get in the arena. Help build magic internet money
Applications close December 31
Agenda:
Week 0: RPC Scavenger Hunt
Week 1: Build a wallet
Week 2: Wallet management
Week 3: P2P & Mining
Week 4: Lightning
Bring a proof of concept to life
Explore the ₿OSS ecosystem
Meet ₿OSS maintainers
Choose a ₿OSS project and provide value
Get coaching on the next step


₿OSS Challenge
₿OSS Challenge - start your career in bitcoin open source