Through its decentralized network and limited number of coins, Bitcoin promises a kind of utopian version of currency. The four main features of the bitcoin network are a public transaction ledger (in fact a transaction log because it exhibits cryptographically enforced append only properties), a p2p network for p2p transactions and distributed management of the security of the transaction log, a novel inflation controlled whole network mining difficulty allowing the creation of virtual scarce bitcoins, and finally smart contracts. So, the question is: How does the Bitcoin network ensure that consensus is achieved, even though there are countless copies of the public ledger stored all over the world? By itself, the Bitcoin network can handle less than 10 transactions per second, which limits its use as a currency on a global scale. Given previous challenges to making BIP32 wallets compatible with each other, a perhaps more achievable use would be making it easier to export transaction history from a wallet and use it in other programs, such as for accounting. The reason given in the pull request for the change is to simplify message parsing. So, what this update does is it indicates which addresses belong to your own wallet, and that makes it especially easier to recognize a change output as such, and hopefully makes PSBTs more accessible in the GUI.

6810 begins using receiving payments to taproot outputs in almost all of the wallet’s automatically-generated output scripts. Although it’s already possible to refer to the key in those cases using the existing raw() descriptor, which is primarily meant to be used with tools like Bitcoin Core’s scantxoutset RPC for scanning its database of UTXOs, the new rawtr() descriptor makes it easier to use other existing descriptor fields to associate additional information with the taproot output such as key origin information. ● Wallet label export format: Craig Raw posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list a proposed BIP to standardize the format wallets use to export labels for their addresses and transactions. While initial miniscript features will only include segwit v0 support, eventually support for tapscript and partial descriptors could make it possible to add commitments inside tapscript without solely using the raw() descriptor. It’s a collection that provides insights into market momentum, support and resistance levels, and the direction of the trend.

I think regulatory hostility is still a risk to watch out for while the market capitalization is sub-$1 trillion. Despite the hype, cryptocurrencies still don’t fulfill the basic functions of money as a store of value, means of exchange, and unit of account. A standardized export format could in theory allow two pieces of wallet software that used the same BIP32 account hierarchy to open each others’ backups and recover not just funds but all of the information the user manually entered about their transactions. This week’s newsletter describes a proposal for a standardized wallet label export format and includes our regular sections with summaries of recent questions and answers from the Bitcoin StackExchange, a list of new software releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software. This week’s newsletter describes how BLS signatures could be used to improve DLCs without consensus changes to Bitcoin and includes our regular sections with announcements of new software releases and release candidates, plus summaries of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software. DLCs were originally proposed to use a feature of schnorr signatures but were later developed to use more generalized signature adaptors.

2273 implements the proposed interactive funding protocol where two LN nodes coordinate more closely to open a new payment channel. Using a multi-step protocol, Alice can prove to Bob that her final signature for spending a certain payment will reveal to him a value that will satisfy some specified condition. Bitcoin does not support BLS signatures and a soft fork would be required to add them, but Fournier links to a paper he co-authored that describes how information can be securely extracted from a BLS signature and used with Bitcoin-compatible signature adaptors without any changes to Bitcoin. The attestation could be transformed into signatures that would allow settling the DLC onchain. As with current DLC contracts, the oracle would not know which onchain transactions were based on its BLS signatures. ● Using Bitcoin-compatible BLS signatures for DLCs: Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs) allow a trusted third party known as an oracle to attest to a piece of data. If they didn’t agree, any one of them could send the program to the oracle (perhaps with a small payment

its service) and receive back a BLS attestation to the program source code and the value returned by running it.