Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #337 (TL;DR)
Highlights
Rewarding Pool Miners with Tradeable Ecash Shares
Ongoing discussions on paying miners with tradeable ecash shares to reduce payout delays in smaller mining pools.
Benefits: Miners can sell shares immediately on the open market without revealing their identity.
Challenges for pools using FPPS schemes include high fee variance and the need for large reserves.
New proposal by developer vnprc:
Small pools could launch under larger pools to minimize variance for early miners.
Intermediate pools could trade ecash shares to sustain operations.
Offchain Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs)
A new protocol allows creating and resolving multiple DLCs offchain using shared funding transactions.
Enables reallocation of funds based on contract outcomes and supports integration with the Lightning Network.
Builds on earlier research (Newsletters #174 and #260), with updates from developer conduition.
Releases & Updates
Added BIP353 human-readable names and reduced on-chain fees for multi-HTLC force-closures.
Notable Code Changes:
Eclair: Introduced a 12-block delay for closing channels to support splicing.
Rust Bitcoin: Added BIP324 support for v2 P2P transport messages.
BDK: Default transaction version updated from 1 to 2 to enhance privacy.
BIPs:
BIP375: Silent payments with PSBTs.
BIP78: Payjoin now retains UTXO data for compatibility with BIP174.
Stay updated with Bitcoin Optech’s latest releases and development discussions to enhance your Bitcoin knowledge and infrastructure management.
