In this week update by @tuma, we feature Fedimint exposing APIs for atomic swaps, the Cashu Development Kit (CDK) (@Cashu) adding support for Iroh, and Marmot (@marmot) upgrading to version 2 of the messaging protocol. We also cover several important news from the Bitcoin ecosystem. We discuss the current effort by the Red Team to find vulnerabilities in Bitcoin related projects and responsibly disclosing them to maintainers, Boltz (@Boltz - Non-Custodial Bitcoin Exchange) stopping its swap service, a critical bug in BTCPayServer (@BTCPay Server), and the BIP110 fork. View article →

In this week update by @tuma, we feature two specification improvements to the Lightning Network, with the merging of BOLT12 payer proofs, and @Cashu, with the possibility to mint and melt ecash tokens through custom payment methods. We also cover the recent COLDCARD incident. Due to a bug in the entropy generation firmware, users saw their funds drained from their wallets. We finally discuss the new BIP460 for Cross-Input Signature Aggregation (CISA), the Indian government against India, and some other interesting news. View article →

In this week update form @tuma, we feature the most interesting things happened during Bitcoin++ Consensus Edition in Toronto (@btcplusplus), where devs met to discuss new consensus proposals and what are the best way forward for Bitcoin. We also cover some other interesting news from the Bitcoin ecosystem. Notably, a PR was opened in Bitcoin Core to bring BIP54 (Consensus Cleanup) into the protocol, Lightning Labs launched a third Ark implementation, and silent payments being integrated in libsecp256k1. View article →

In this week update by @tuma we feature the ongoing effort to migrate LDK from GitHub to a self-hosted instance, after the company banned the Lightning implementation from running CI. We also cover a new BIP being published, BIP95, which defines a new testnet to replace testnet4, and six new BIPs being assigned a number. In particular, BIP453, provides common terminology for transaction components, BIPs 455, 456, and 457 compose the specifications for the SwiftSync protocol for faster IBD, and BIPs 458 and 459 describe half and full signatureaggregation, an important building block towards CISA. Finally, we cover some interesting news from the Bitcoin ecosystem. In particular, we present some interviews from Nairobi, mempool(.)space (@mempool) joining the SV2 working group, and some useful information about how to protect yourself during the upcoming forks. View article →

Second partners with Tando, Mavapay, JunubBTC to bring Ark-powered Bitcoin settlement to Africa at @btcplusplus open source edition in Kenya, Nairobi last week. Read the full article for more

Second partners with Tando, Mavapay, JunubBTC to bring Ark-powered Bitcoin settlement to Africa

Ark ships mobile-money systems across five African countries

In this week update we feature PR2049 in CDK (@Cashu), which aims to integrate Payjoin in the Cashu implementation. We also cover Century Metadata (@Century Metadata), the new venture by former Core-lightning developer Rusty Russell (@Rusty Russell), which promises long term reliable storage and retrieval for small amounts of private data. We finally present other news from the ecosystem. Notably, Bitcoin++ (@btcplusplus) held its first-ever African conference, LDK banned by GitHub, and a guest book review on the Insider Edtion. View article →

"There are five or six books that every serious cypherpunk ends up reading. A Lodging of Wayfaring Men is one of them." Check out Max Hillebrand ( @Max ) review of Paul Rosenberg's book for the Insider! View article →

In this week update by @tuma we feature the latest release of the Cashu Development Kit (CDK) (@Cashu), which introduced a new BDK on-chain payment backend based on NUT-30. We also cover the effort from the Marmot protocol (@marmot) to draft a new set of specifications to improve the reliability of the system. We finally present some interesting news from the Bitcoin ecosystem. Notably, Bark by Second (@Second) available on mainnet, a new vulnerability found in Bitcoin Core, improvements on splicing, and a draft BIP for a new testnet. View article →