Don't support things you don't want to see more of.

Celebration time!

So, we're debating paying kids pocket money in sats. Since we're talking a few dollars a week, I'm thinking ecash, using

Century Metadata Cashu Mint

But what client? They have Android devices...

Indeed.

#CLN We're finally deprecating pay (in favor of xpay) in the next release: Greenlight has conclusively demonstrated that it's more effective across the board. That begins the 12 month window to removal. We've long had `xpay-as-pay` for xpay to take over pay commands. Flipping that to default true and running the tests has been eye-opening. Given our commitment to not breaking users, I'm re-learning things about pay. For example, if you try to pay the same invoice twice, pay "succeeds", whereas xpay says you've already paid. So when acting as pay, xpay needs to do that too. Mostly, the xpay error messages are much more informative and readable. But in a couple of cases they didn't use the correct error *code* (eg. There's a specific one for "route too expensive") so that's fixed. After this, I'll get back to my new "repeatpay" command and plug-in, which is a higher-level way to deal with recurring offers (an experimental option for now).

I expect Bitcoin to get a quantum scare every ten to twenty years, FWIW.

Weekly summary: I heard Iran is going to use Quantum Black is going to crash Bitcoin!

Claude is really happy to write more code. This can be a super-power! But it can also mean repetition, nasty workarounds, and unreviewable code :( For the BOLT12 payer proofs, I asked it to take my implementation, produce test vectors then compare against Vincenzo's LDK implementation. There was a bug in the spec around field ordering which this found, and it proceeded to fix my code, adding another complex pass to reorder the fields. Instead I asked it to change the Rust code, and indeed it was much simpler there too. If I hadn't caught this, we would and been stuck with a very weird spec and a lot of gratuitous code in every codebase. So now I need to start emphasizing the joy of simplicity, I guess.

Yes. View quoted note →

I've been through tech hype cycles before. They always have a grain of truth in them (otherwise they're trivially refuted) but they don't always work out. I have been through three VR waves, for example. I can't tell where Quantum Computing will land, though it has all the signs of needing a few more decades of occasional hype cycles. But I *can* tell that all the proposed mitigating signature schemes for Bitcoin suck hard: they're technically impressive because they're 10x better than I expected, but they're still 10x worse than what we have now. This means two things: I applaud and support the continuing research. And I won't support a soft fork any new cryptographic schemes until the someone demonstrates an extant QC that can factor faster than a classical one.

Americans trying to get back to the moon and missed.

This one doesn't keep getting disconnected from LND and Eclair, because we disabled the padding feature which made all messages the same length on the wire which was to be a release feature 😔 It was an obscure part of the spec, but LND have already fixed theirs for v21: kudos! I submitted PRs to Eclair and Phoenix (the latter mainly Claude, but it's a trivial change). I still have hope for a workaround, but we'll see if I can get it before Sangbida as Release Captain says No! View quoted note →

"Also Bitcoin Core, but in blue" Send $$ NOW for my new project!

I keep hearing about all the billions left on the sidelines, which will come rushing into Bitcoin when some legislative or regulatory event occurs. Here's some history: - Bitcoin futures ETFs. October 2021, price $61k - Bitcoin spot ETFs. January 2024, price $42k - March 2026, price $70k Now, maybe it's still coming, but at this point you might want to start doubting this narrative.

Now I serve a web page at that URL. Probably presents too much info. @calle might have suggestions for what I should put here? View quoted note →

Fired up a cashu mint today: should exercise my CLN node a bit more!

Century Metadata Cashu Mint

I made enchiladas, where N = 8.

Finally read BIP-54 (mirror at https://bips.dev/54/) and it is straightforward,minimal and thorough. At this point I can endorse it as a good idea and worth doing. There's no rush, but I am looking forward to activation.

I am loving listening to the Pieter Wuille interview. It's clear from motivation to technical explanation, and Stephan shepherds the discussion masterfully!

Stephan Livera

Cluster Mempool Explained with Pieter Wuille | SLP730

Stephan Livera and Pieter Wuille discuss Cluster Mempool for Bitcoin Core, its motivations, and its implications for Bitcoin users and miners. Wher...