Socratic Seminar 12 Topics

Please post here to add any topics you would like to discuss at the next socratic seminar.

Leftover topics

Lightning

Taro Skepticism

A critical look at the scalability properties of the Taro protocol if deployed on the bitcoin blockchain

Advances in Channel Jamming Research

The prolifically productive dream team Gleb Naumenko and Antoine Riard have released a series of research reports examining channel jamming. Read the lightning-dev post for a brief summary or dive into the gitbook and read the whole shebang.

Taproot Errwhere

Very exciting PR lightningnetwork/lnd#6810 for sweeping funds, funding channels, and sending blobs to watch towers.

Scaling

Coinpool

Gleb and Antoine propose Coinpool, a new shared UTXO ownership model. Coinpool requires three new OP codes to be soft forked into bitcoin script, so don’t hold your breath. It is recommended that you first grok Eltoo since coinpool builds upon the eltoo protocol to add new capabilities.

Member requests:

Taproot address adoption

How can the addresses be added to a wallet? What is the difference between taproot and bech32? Does taproot save on costs? How much?
New website launched When Taproot?

Border Wallets

Border Wallets are a new way to quickly and easily memorize Bitcoin seed phrases.

notes

Problem memorizing 24 random words is not super reliable. We use physical backups. Not everybody has the ability or the infrastructure to create backups in multiple geo locations. Maybe travel a lot or fleeing from somewhere. Can't really securely bring backup with you. We are much better at memorizing patterns (https://www.borderwallets.com/docs/words-vs-patterns do the test).

A way to quickly and easily memorize a bitcoin seed phrase.

1. Download a blank grid.
2. Draw design/pattern
3. Then generate an entropy grid, which has all words randomly mixed (or deterministic grid from seed words)
4. Create border wallet. (map pattern to grid)
5. calculate checksum word.

PayJoin

A type of coinjoin where merchant and buyer create a coordinated transaction. Coordination happens with PayToEndPoint [P2EP] concept. PayJoins obfuscates the total amount being payed and breaks the common ownership heuristic. Has a fallback to ordinary tx. Another benefit is that the merchant saves money by consolidating (assuming higher tx fees in the future).

Alice input   1 bitcoin   -->   Bob output            0.2 bitcoin
                                               Alice change output   0.8 bitcoin

Alice input   1 bitcoin   -->   Bob output            0.7 bitcoin
Bob input     0.5 bitcoin -->   Alice change output   0.8 bitcoin

resources
https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/using-wasabi/PayJoin.html#advantages-of-payjoin
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/PayJoin
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0021.mediawiki
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0078.mediawiki
https://thebitcoinmanual.com/articles/btc-payjoin/
https://blog.blockstream.com/en-improving-privacy-using-pay-to-endpoint/

myNotes

P2EP - pay to endpoint (Blockstream) or PayJoin. Input correction (foundational heuristic) - inputs owned by same user.
Mix the history of two coins. It confuses analytic algorithms. It makes it so that the actual amount being paid to whom is all confusing.

• It's not obvious that it is a coinjoin.

BIPs

Might be helpful to quickly go over the topic of BIPs.

Bisq

Buy and sell bitcoin privately and securely on a Bisq's peer-to-peer network.

notes

Trading takes place right on the blockchain, which help prevent censorship.

• a variety of ways to pay fiat, or alt coin for bitcoin (https://bisq.wiki/Payment_methods)
  There are volunteers that help handle disputes.

Bisq2 https://github.com/bisq-network/bisq2

• complete revamp with many new supports, including a good API.

• https://cryptogeek.info/en/exchanges/bisq/3

Introduction to Bisc
I tried to install the software but was unsuccessful. I first downloaded the binary and the signature file. Then acquired the public key from the GitHub repo. Then verified the signature against the public key.

$ sudo gpg --import 29CDFD3B.asc
 gpg: key CD5DC1C529CDFD3B: public key "Christoph Atteneder <christoph.atteneder@gmail.com>" imported

$ gpg --verify gpg --verify Bisq-1.9.6.dmg.asc Bisq-1.9.6.dmg
gpg: Signature made Thu Oct 27 11:11:54 2022 EDT
gpg:                using RSA key CB36D7D2EBB2E35D9B75500BCD5DC1C529CDFD3B
gpg:                issuer "christoph.atteneder@gmail.com"
gpg: Good signature from "Christoph Atteneder <christoph.atteneder@gmail.com>" [unknown]

Then installed binary. When I tried to open it I got the following error.

Private Payments: BIP 351

https://privatepayments.org
A stealth address protocol for Bitcoin - makes it possible for two parties to transact using addresses that only they can calculate.

• https://github.com/private-payments/rust-private-payments

[vnprc]

Lightning

CLN Channel Splicing Draft PR

Dustin Dettmer has opened a draft PR to enable channel splicing on CLN. There is a long list of TODO items to get this PR across the finish line but this feature represents a massive improvement to LN usability.

News

• CashApp fully integrates lightning (ref).
• Arti, a pure-Rust Tor implementation.

[vnprc]

Bitcoin Core

[PR merged] wallet: fast rescan with BIP157 block filters for descriptor wallets

PR #25957 enables fast wallet rescan using compact block filters, only for descriptor wallets.

[vnprc]

Privacy

ln-vortex is a tool written in scala that allows coinjoin lightning channel opens. Ben Carman and @deregs_ just opened the first mainnet vortex coinjoin.

Clark Moody Bitcoin Dashboard

Found this cool dashboard to get a summary of the entire bitcoin ecosystem at a glance. https://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/dashboard/