Bitcoin Explained - The Technical Side of Bitcoin
Van Wirdum Sjorsnado
Bitcoin Magazine's Technical editor Aaron van Wirdum teams up with Bitcoin core contributor Sjors Provoost to explain Bitcoin one episode at a time.
Episode 96: Mining Decentralization Update
Stratum v2, DATUM, Bitaxe, P2Pool and friends. In Bitcoin, Explained 96, Aaron and Sjors discuss some recent innovations in mining, and in particular mining decentralization. Specifically, they discuss the Stratum V2 and DATUM mining protocols to decentralize transaction selection in mining pools, the open source hardware Bitaxe miner, and some recent proposals to make decentralized mining pools like P2Pool more viable. === This episode’s sponsor: CoinKite, maker of the ColdCard. Aaron’s Nost
Feb 5, • 47:10
Episode 95: Bitcoin Core v28.0
In Bitcoin, Explained 95, Aaron and Sjors discuss the new Bitcoin Core 28.0 release. Specifically, they cover upgrades to Bitcoin’s testnet (testnet 4), new mempool policies, full RBF integration, the introduction of assume UTXO, improved wallet migration support and the implementation of block file XOR. https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/ Release notes: https://bitcoincore.org/en/releases/28.0/ This episode’s sponsor: CoinKite, maker of the ColdCard. Aaron’s Twitter: @AaronvanW Aaron’s Nostr
Oct 7, 2024 • 43:28
Episode 94: Silent Payments part 2
In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors welcome Ruben Somsen and Josie to the show to discuss BIP 352, their now-finalized Bitcoin Improvement Proposal for Silent Payments. As previously discussed in episode 58, Silent Payments use a special type of addresses that allow senders to generate public keys for transaction recipients, in such a way that these recipients can in turn generate the associated private keys. This benefits privacy, as Bitcoin users can freely share a static ad
Jul 7, 2024 • 1:00:43
Episode 93: The Great Consensus Cleanup Revival (And an Update on the Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet Arrests)
In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors discuss the Great Consensus Cleanup Revival soft fork(s). This proposal would fix some known bugs in the Bitcoin protocol, specifically the timewarp vulnerability, large block validation times, 64 byte transactions and BIP 30 verification. Sjors also provides a quick update on the court case against Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev, and places this in the context of the recent arrests of Samourai Wallet developers Keonne Rodriguez and W
May 29, 2024 • 51:00
Episode 92: Bitcoin Core 27.0
In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors explain what new features are included in the upcoming Bitcoin Core 27.0 release. https://github.com/bitcoin-core/bitcoin-devwiki/wiki/27.0-Release-Candidate-Testing-Guide === This episode’s sponsor: CoinKite, maker of the ColdCard Aaron's Twitter: @AaronvanW Aaron’s Nostr: npub1art8cs66ffvnqns5zs5qa9fwlctmusj5lj38j94lv0ulw0j54wjqhpm0w5 Sjors’ Twitter: @provoost Sjors’ Nostr: npub1s6z7hmmx2vud66f3utxd70qem8cwtggx0
Apr 10, 2024 • 35:39
Episode 91: Splicing
In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors are once more joined by Breez developer Jesse de Wit, this time to explain splicing. Splicing allows users of the Lightning Network to effectively add or remove funds from an active channel, allowing for continuous payment and routing activity. Aaron, Sjors and Jesse discuss what challenges this entails, and how these challenges are overcome. At the beginning of the episode, Sjors also gives a brief update on the ongoing TornadoCash trial i
Mar 31, 2024 • 42:45
Episode 90: Asynchronous Lightning Payments
In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors are joined by Breez developer Jesse de Wit to discuss asynchronous lightning payments. They explain why such payments would be useful, how they would work, and what building blocks are required to realize it. In the process, Aaron, Sjors and Jesse also cover the basics of PTLCs and Trampoline Payments. === This episode’s sponsor: CoinKite, maker of the ColdCard Jesse’s Twitter: @WitDeJesse Jesse's Nostr: npub18hwpk5qep3ptnmzatq22ptwr
Feb 23, 2024 • 36:59
Episode 89: B-money and RPOW
In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors discuss two more electronic cash projects that predate Bitcoin: Wei Dai’s b-money and Hal Finney’s RPOW. As detailed in Aaron’s new book, The Genesis Book, these systems introduced design elements that were later utilized by Satoshi Nakamoto. Aaron and Sjors explain what these elements are, and how the inspired Bitcoin’s design. To buy Aaron’s new book, visit www.thegenesisbook.com. Mentioned: B-money (archive link): https://web.archive.o
Jan 22, 2024 • 37:44
Episode 88: Hashcash and Bit Gold
In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors discuss two electronic cash projects that predate Bitcoin: Adam Back’s Hashcash and Nick Szabo’s Bit Gold. As detailed in Aaron’s new book, The Genesis Book, these systems introduced design element that were later utilized by Satoshi Nakamoto. Aaron and Sjors explain what these elements are, and how they inspired Bitcoin’s design. To buy Aaron’s new book, visit www.thegenesisbook.com. Mentioned: * 1992 Dwork & Naor: Pricing via Proce
Jan 3, 2024 • 45:28
Episode 87: The Block 1,983,702 Problem
In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors discuss the so-called “block 1,983,702 problem”. They explain how a bug in early Bitcoin implementations could in rare cases cause a loss of funds, or in a worst-case scenario even lead to consensus failures, while they also explain how BIP 30 and BIP 34 solved this problem. As it turns out, however, BIP 34 introduced a new problem, that could become an issue about twenty years from now… === This episode’s sponsor: CoinKite, maker of the Co
Dec 21, 2023 • 39:14
Episode 86: Ocean Tides
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 "spam" filtering employed by Ocean, and how that potentially affects profitability of the pool. Our new sponsor: https://coinkite
Dec 6, 2023 • 36:20
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
Nov 23, 2023 • 37:19
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/observatio
Oct 5, 2023 • 22:14
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: http
Aug 17, 2023 • 46:48
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.a
Jul 11, 2023 • 30:29
Episode 81: Bitcoin Core 25.0
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-
Jun 26, 2023 • 39:02
Episode 80: Stratum V2
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
Jun 13, 2023 • 50:00
Episode 79: The Witness Discount
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
May 23, 2023 • 49:31
Episode 78: Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (PSBTs) (And Dutch Auctions)
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
May 8, 2023 • 32:57
Episode 77: Peer-to-peer Encryption
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't miss out on the biggest Bitcoin event of the year! B23 in Mia
Apr 24, 2023 • 36:52
Episode 76: Stamps (And the Invalid Block Caused by It)
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't m
Apr 15, 2023 • 50:53
Episode 75: Multisig (And Musig)
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't miss out on the biggest Bitcoin event of the year! B23 in Miami is coming up fast, get your ti
Mar 31, 2023 • 52:30
Episode 74: Pay-to-Script-Hash (P2SH)
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
Mar 17, 2023 • 43:24
Episode 73: OP_VAULT
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
Feb 24, 2023 • 40:42
Episode 72: Inscriptions
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
Feb 9, 2023 • 40:34
Episode 71: Timelocks
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
Jan 20, 2023 • 32:58
Episode 70: The Bitcoin Core 24.0 Bug (Or Why There Is a Bitcoin Core 24.0.1 Release)
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. 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
Dec 30, 2022 • 23:04
Episode 69: The Tornado Cash Trial
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 - https://b.tc/conference/ Bitcoin Magazine - https://store.
Dec 2, 2022 • 39:30
Episode 68: Full Replace-By-Fee (RBF) in Bitcoin Core 24.0
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
Nov 18, 2022 • 42:52
Episode 67: Insights From the Fourth Largest Lightning Network Node
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
Nov 7, 2022 • 50:45
Episode 66: The BTCD Bug That Brought Down LND Nodes
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
Oct 21, 2022 • 33:34
Episode 65: Bitcoin Core 24.0
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
Oct 7, 2022 • 41:36
Episode 64: HD Wallets, Mnemonic Codes and SeedQR
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
Sep 19, 2022 • 29:25
Episode 63: The Bitcoin Core Development Process
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
Sep 2, 2022 • 39:54
Episode 62: Hash Functions
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
Aug 12, 2022 • 35:47
Episode 61: OP_RETURN (And the ‘OP_RETURN Wars’)
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
Jul 15, 2022 • 26:17
Episode 60: Reusing Addresses (and the Hertzbleed Attack)
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
Jul 1, 2022 • 33:10
Episode 59: Hard Forks (And Whether Bitcoin Has Ever Hard Forked)
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.
Jun 20, 2022 • 40:55
Episode 58: Silent Payments
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
Jun 10, 2022 • 46:16
Episode 57: User Rejected Soft Forks (URSFs)
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
May 6, 2022 • 43:42
Episode 56: Bitcoin Core 23.0
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
Apr 25, 2022 • 34:53
Episode 55: Syncing Old Nodes
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
Mar 25, 2022 • 37:06
Episode 54: Burying Soft Forks
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
Feb 25, 2022 • 37:05
Episode 53: Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs)
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
Feb 11, 2022 • 52:02
Episode 52: Federated eCash
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
Jan 14, 2022 • 44:52
Episode 51: Compact Blocks
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
Dec 31, 2021 • 18:04
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
Nov 27, 2021 • 39:16
Episode 49: The Attack of the Fake Peers!
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
Nov 12, 2021 • 20:49
Episode 48: SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT and Eltoo part 2
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
Oct 29, 2021 • 32:25
Episode 47: Lightning Network Payment Flows
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
Oct 15, 2021 • 27:21
Episode 46: The Chivo App (First Look)
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
Oct 11, 2021 • 53:17
Episode 45: Bitcoin Core 22.0
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
Sep 13, 2021 • 32:37
Episode 44: BOLT 12
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
Aug 13, 2021 • 30:35
Episode 43: Hardware Wallets and Blockstream’s Jade Wallet
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
Jul 30, 2021 • 52:25
Episode 42: The Bitcoin Beach Wallet (Bitcoin Beach Special)
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
Jul 16, 2021 • 58:36
Episode 41: Lightning Network Routing
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
Jul 2, 2021 • 40:04
Episode 40: Taproot Activation part 5: Lock-in
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
Jun 18, 2021 • 30:23
Episode 39: The Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) Process
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
Jun 11, 2021 • 20:42
Episode 38: The Replace-By-Fee Bug Affecting Child Transactions In Bitcoin Core
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
May 21, 2021 • 20:20
Episode 37: MaraPool and Mining Censorship
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
May 7, 2021 • 31:37
Episode 36: Taproot Activation part 4: Speedy Trial and the LOT=true Client
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
Apr 23, 2021 • 51:53
Episode 35: SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT and Eltoo
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
Apr 16, 2021 • 34:06
Episode 34: Erlay
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
Apr 9, 2021 • 24:01
Episode 33: RGB
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,
Mar 26, 2021 • 45:36
Episode 32: Segregated Witness (SegWit)
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
Mar 19, 2021 • 28:02
Episode 31: Taproot Activation part 3: Speedy Trial
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
Mar 12, 2021 • 35:32
Episode 30: Hardware Wallet Integration in Bitcoin Core and the Hardware Wallet Interface (HWI)
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
Mar 5, 2021 • 26:22
Episode 29: Taproot Activation part 2: LOT=true Versus LOT=false
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
Feb 26, 2021 • 40:49
Episode 28: Bitcoin Addresses
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
Feb 19, 2021 • 32:08
Episode 27: Softchains
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
Feb 12, 2021 • 50:17
Episode 26: Replace-By-Fee (RBF)
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
Feb 5, 2021 • 32:11
Episode 25: Compact Client-Side Block Filters (Neutrino)
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
Jan 29, 2021 • 26:28
Episode 24: Bitcoin Core 0.21.0
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
Jan 22, 2021 • 32:59
Episode 23: Drivechain
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,
Jan 15, 2021 • 45:29
Episode 22: The Lightning Network
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.
Jan 8, 2021 • 24:23
Episode 21: Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) In Bitcoin (And Why It Matters)
In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Aaron and Sjors discuss why it matters that Bitcoin software is open source… and why even open source software doesn't necessarily solve all software-specific trust issues. In theory, the fact that most Bitcoin nodes, wallets and applications are open source should ensure that developers can’t include malicious code in the programs: anyone can inspect the source code for malware. In practice, however, the number of people with enough expertise to do t
Dec 18, 2020 • 35:03
Episode 20: RSK, Federated Sidechains and Powpeg
In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss RSK’s shift from a federated sidechain model to the project’s new Powpeg solution. RSK is a merge mined Ethereum-like Bitcoin sidechain developed by IOVlabs. Bitcoin users can effectively move their coins to this blockchain that operates more like Ethereum, and move the coins back to the Bitcoin blockchain when they so choose. Some Bitcoin miners utilize their hashpower to mine bocks on the sidechain,
Dec 11, 2020 • 23:19
Episode 19: Child Pays for Parent (CPFP) and Package Relay
In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discussed Bitcoin mempools, Child Pays For Parent (CPFP) and package relay. Package relay is the project that Gloria Zhao will work on as part of her Brink fellowship, which was announced earlier this week, and would make the Lightning Network more robust (among other benefits). Mempools are the collections of unconfirmed transactions stored by nodes, from which they forward transactions to peers. Miners usual
Dec 4, 2020 • 20:39
Episode 18: Erebus Attacks
In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Aaron and Sjors discuss the Erebus Attack. The episode is a follow-up from last week’s episode on Eclipse Attacks, a type of attack that isolates a Bitcoin node by occupying all of its connection slots to block the node from receiving any transactions. Erebus Attacks are Eclipse Attacks where an attacker essentially spoofs a whole part of the internet. Support the Show! Follow Bitcoin Magazine on Twitter @BitcoinMagazine Follow Aaron van Wirdum @Aaron
Nov 20, 2020 • 16:00
Episode 17: Eclipse Attacks
In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Aaron and Sjors discuss Eclipse attacks. More specifically, they discuss the 2015 paper “Eclipse Attacks on Bitcoin’s Peer-to-Peer Network,” written by Ethan Heilman, Alison Kendler, Aviv Zohar and Sharon Goldberg, from Boston University and Hebrew University/MSR Israel. Support the Show! Follow Bitcoin Magazine on Twitter @BitcoinMagazine Follow Aaron van Wirdum @AaronvanW Follow Sjors Provoost @provoost Music: Song Title: Segwit Sounds By: The Nakam
Nov 13, 2020 • 20:32
Episode 16: Open Timestamps
In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Aaron and Sjors discuss Open Timestamps, a Bitcoin-based time stamping project by applied cryptography consultant and former Bitcoin Core contributor Peter Todd. Open Timestamps leverages the security of the Bitcoin blockchain to timestamp any type of data, allowing for irrefutable proof that that data existed at a particular point in time. Support the Show! Follow Bitcoin Magazine on Twitter @BitcoinMagazine Follow Aaron van Wirdum @AaronvanW Follow
Nov 6, 2020 • 31:12
Episode 15: Utreexo
On this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Aaron and Sjors are once again joined by Ruben Somsen. This time, the trio doesn’t discuss one of Somsen’s own proposals, but they dive into a concept by Tadge Dryja called Utreexo. Helpful links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y6n88DmkjU https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoins-growing-utxo-problem-and-how-utreexo-can-help-solve-it Support the Show! Follow Bitcoin Magazine on Twitter @BitcoinMagazine Follow Aaron van Wirdum @Aaronva
Oct 30, 2020 • 31:46
Episode 14: Headers First, Assume Valid and Assume UTXO
On this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Aaron and Sjors discuss “Assume UTXO”, a proposal and project by Chaincode Labs alumni James O’Beirne. One of the biggest bottlenecks for scaling Bitcoin — if not the biggest one — is initial block download: the time it takes for a Bitcoin node to synchronize with the Bitcoin network, as it needs to process all historic transactions and blocks in order to construct the latest UTXO-set: the current state of bitcoin-ownership. Aaron and Sjors explai
Oct 23, 2020 • 23:21
Episode 13: Tor v3 Support in Bitcoin Core 0.21
Bitcoin Core 0.21 will support Tor v3 addresses. Aaron and Sjors explain what this means and why it matters, and also discuss how new Bitcoin nodes find existing Bitcoin nodes when they bootstrap to the network. Helpful Links: * Tor V3 (onion) address support in Bitcoin Core: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/19954 * the ADDRv2 message added in BIP155 that allows nodes to gossip those new Tor addresses: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0155.mediawiki#Specification * DNS see
Oct 16, 2020 • 18:48
Episode 12: Blind Merged Mining and the Perpetual One-Way Peg
In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Ruben Somsen returns to explain his proposal to combine blind merged mining and perpetual one-way pegs in order to create a new type of sidechain. The bad news: it won't make you rich but it could help scale Bitcoin! Helpful Links: https://medium.com/@RubenSomsen/21-million-bitcoins-to-rule-all-sidechains-the-perpetual-one-way-peg-96cb2f8ac302 Support the Show! Follow Bitcoin Magazine on Twitter @BitcoinMagazine Follow Aaron van Wirdum @AaronvanW Fol
Oct 9, 2020 • 40:12
Episode 11: Easypaysy
In this episode Sjors and Aaron discuss Jose Femenias' Easypaysy proposal, an account system for Bitcoin, on Bitcoin. They also announce groundbreaking news: The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado now has its own RSS-feed! Aaron's article covering Easypaysy on Bitcoin Magazine https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-need-accounts-one-developer-thinks-figured The BIP in Github https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0047.mediawiki Support the Show! Follow Bitcoin Magazine on Twitter @BitcoinMa
Oct 2, 2020 • 32:49
Episode 10: Signet
Sjors and Aaron discuss Signet, a new type of testnet for Bitcoin that was merged into Bitcoin Core last week. They also discuss the original version of testnet and its problems, as well as alternative testing environment regtest. Support the Show! Follow Bitcoin Magazine on Twitter @BitcoinMagazine Follow Aaron van Wirdum @AaronvanW Follow Sjors Provoost @provoost Music: Song Title: Segwit Sounds By: The NakamoTones Album: Citadel Music Produced by: Bitcoin Audio
Sep 25, 2020 • 15:25
Episode 9: The Libsecp256k1 Library
Schnorr signature support was merged into the libsec256k1 library last week. In the episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Aaron and Sjors discuss what the libsecp256k1 library is, why it matters for Bitcoin, and what it means that Schnorr signature support was merged. Sjors also briefly explains what he ultimate send RPC is, his own pull request that was recently merged into Bitcoin Core as well. Helpful Links: The Power of Schnorr: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/the-power-of-schnorr-the-s
Sep 25, 2020 • 25:18
Episode 8: Statechains
Aaron and Sjors welcome their first guest on to the show, Ruben Somsen, to discuss his proposals for Statechains on Bitcoin! Statechains allow you to send keys not UTXO and it offers quite a few scaling and functionality improvements! Helpful Links: Ruben's presentation on Bitcoin Magazine about Statechains: https://youtu.be/CKx6eULIC3A Aaron's Bitcoin Magazine article on Statechains: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/statechains-sending-keys-not-coins-to-scale-bitcoin-off-chain Support the
Sep 25, 2020 • 40:39
Episode 7: XPubs
In this episode of the Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Sjors and Aaron explain what an xpub is and how it is used by Bitcoin wallets. Helpful Links: http://rosenbaum.se/book/grokking-bitcoin-4.html#_hierarchical_deterministic_wallets https://walletsrecovery.org Support the Show! Follow Bitcoin Magazine on Twitter @BitcoinMagazine Follow Aaron van Wirdum @AaronvanW Follow Sjors Provoost @provoost Music: Song Title: Segwit Sounds By: The NakamoTones Album: Citadel Music Produced by: Bitcoin Audio
Sep 25, 2020 • 24:38
Episode 6: Payment Pools
In this episode of the Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Sjors and Aaron discuss the future of Bitcoin Scaling. This podcast is all about Taproot and the cool feature it enables called Payment pools. Topics What are payment pools? Why they need Taproot. The UX of sharing UTXOs How Payment pools work with lightning Helpful Links: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/building-on-taproot-payment-pools-could-be-bitcoins-next-layer-two-protocol Support the Show! Follow Bitcoin Magazine on Twitter @Bitco
Sep 25, 2020 • 35:54
Episode 5: Time-Warp Attacks (And Bitcoin Cash’s Difficulty Adjustment Drama)
In this episode of the Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Sjors explains the "time-warp attack" on Bitcon and Aaron explains the unfolding drama with the bcash difficulty adjustment. Helpful Links: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/miners-are-milking-bcashs-difficulty-adjustments-and-why-problem1 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/why-bcash-mining-shouldnt-affect-bitcoin-much-bitcoin-mining-could-ruin-bcash https://read.cash/@jtoomim/dark-secrets-of-the-grasberg-daa-a9239fb6 https://blog.bitcoinabc.
Sep 25, 2020 • 54:02
Episode 4: Miniscript
In this episode of the Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Aaron and Sjors dive into Miniscript and how it makes using Bitcoin Script much easier. Helpful Links: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/miniscript-how-blockstream-engineers-are-making-bitcoin-programming-easyer Support the Show! Follow Bitcoin Magazine on Twitter @BitcoinMagazine Follow Aaron van Wirdum @AaronvanW Follow Sjors Provoost @provoost Music: Song Title: Segwit Sounds By: The NakamoTones Album: Citadel Music Produced by: Bitcoin Audio
Sep 25, 2020 • 29:09
Episode 3: Taproot Activation
In the third episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Aaron and Sjors break down and explain the different opinions and options available for activating Taproot and potentially future softfork upgrades. Helpful Links: Explainer article by Aaron discussing the different upgrade options: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bip-8-bip-9-or-modern-soft-fork-activation-how-bitcoin-could-upgrade-next Support the Show! Follow Bitcoin Magazine on Twitter @BitcoinMagazine Follow Aaron van Wird
Sep 25, 2020 • 44:12
Episode 2: Taproot
In the second episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, Aaron and Sjors break down and explain Taproot, the building blocks that make Taproot possible, and what it enables Bitcoin to do. Helpful Links: Taproot Explainer: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/taproot-coming-what-it-and-how-it-will-benefit-bitcoin Support the Show! Follow Bitcoin Magazine on Twitter @BitcoinMagazine Follow Aaron van Wirdum @AaronvanW Follow Sjors Provoost @provoost Music: Song Title: Segwit Sounds By
Sep 25, 2020 • 31:02
