Bitcoin Explained - The Technical Side of Bitcoin

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 Processing or Combatting Junk Mail * 2002 Back: Hashcash - A Denial of Service Counter-Measure * Bit Gold: Bitcoin Magazine article (1998) * One-way function: Wikipedia * Secure-benchmark function: Intrapolynomial Cryptography (1999) === This episode’s sponsor: CoinKite, maker of the ColdCard Aaron's Twitter: @AaronvanW Aaron’s Nostr: npub1art8cs66ffvnqns5zs5qa9fwlctmusj5lj38j94lv0ulw0j54wjqhpm0w5 Sjors’ Twitter: @provoost Sjors’ Nostr: npub1s6z7hmmx2vud66f3utxd70qem8cwtggx0jgc7gh8pqwz2k8cltuqrdwk4c If you’d like to sponsor the show, please email info at bitcoinexplainedpodcast.com https://bitcoinexplainedpodcast.com/

Aaron and Sjors discuss the 'block 1,983,702 problem' in the Bitcoin protocol and its potential for loss of funds and consensus failures. They explain how BIP 30 and BIP 34 solved this problem but introduced a new issue for the future. They explore solutions such as segment commitment and propose SegWit as the most reasonable solution for empty blocks in Bitcoin mining.



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.com/

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

The podcast discusses an invalid block mined by Marathon Pool and explains why it was invalid and the lack of impact on the Bitcoin network. Updates about the show and recent Bitcoin Core updates are also mentioned.

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: https://milksad.info/Libbitcoin lead developer Eric Voskuil on Milk Sad: https://youtu.be/3uwl5xDdc7c Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425 THIS EPISODE’S SPONSORS: ⁠Voltage Cloud⁠ ⁠Bitcoin 2024 Nashville⁠ ⁠Bitcoin Magazine⁠ ⁠Bitcoin Amsterdam⁠ Lower your time preference and lock-in your BITCOIN 2024 conference tickets today! Use the code BMLIVE for a 10% Discount!  - https://b.tc/conference/2024

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.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425 THIS EPISODE’S SPONSORS: Voltage Cloud Bitcoin 2024 Nashville Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Amsterdam Lower your time preference and lock-in your BITCOIN 2024 conference tickets today! Use the code BMLIVE for a 10% Discount!  - https://b.tc/conference/2024

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-merkle-tree-design/ 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 conference tickets today! Use the code BMLIVE for a 10% Discount!  - https://b.tc/conference/2024

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-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425 Lower your time preference and lock-in your BITCOIN 2024 conference tickets today! Use the code BMLIVE for a 10% Discount! - https://b.tc/conference/2024

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 conference tickets today! Use the code BMLIVE for a 10% Discount! - https://b.tc/conference/2024