TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast #671: What's Really in Bitcoin Core Version 30 with Instagibbs
49 snips
Oct 15, 2025 Dive into the latest Bitcoin Core version 30 release with intriguing discussions on technical upgrades like checkpoint removal and orphanage enhancements. Explore the controversial OP_RETURN debate and its implications for privacy, alongside insights about Lightning Network challenges. Instagibbs shares thoughts on potential future developments post-v30, touching on legal risks and privacy pressures impacting the community. The potential of AI in fuzz testing and the importance of community engagement in policy reform are also highlighted.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
How Bitcoin Core Releases Work
- Bitcoin Core is the dominant reference client handling peer-to-peer, consensus, wallet and more in one project.
- Major releases follow a six-month cadence with feature freezes and release candidates before final binaries.
Refactoring The Monolith
- Developers are actively refactoring Satoshi's original monolithic code into modular components for safer changes.
- This modularity enables separate testing and reuse while avoiding accidental consensus behavior changes.
Why Checkpoints Are Being Removed
- Checkpoints historically prevented header-disk-fill attacks by locking history up to a point.
- Version 30 removes checkpoints using a headers pre-sync that verifies proof-of-work before writing headers to disk.