39:14

Ep. 87 Dec 21, 2023

Episode 87: The Block 1,983,702 Problem

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors discuss the so-called “block 1,983,702 problem”. They explain how a bug in early Bitcoin implementations could in rare cases cause a loss of funds, or in a worst-case scenario even lead to consensus failures, while they also explain how BIP 30 and BIP 34 solved this problem. As it turns out, however, BIP 34 introduced a new problem, that could become an issue about twenty years from now… ===
 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/

36:20

Ep. 86 Dec 6, 2023

Episode 86: Ocean Tides

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: CoinKite, maker of the ColdCard

37:19

Ep. 85 Nov 23, 2023

Episode 85: Bitcoin Core 26.0 (And F2Pool’s OFAC Compliant Mining Policy)

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

22:14

Ep. 84 Oct 5, 2023

Episode 84: Marathon Pool’s Invalid Block (And Some Updates About the Show)



In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors discuss an invalid block mined by Marathon Pool. They explain why the block was invalid, what caused it (and what didn’t), and why that didn’t affect the Bitcoin network.

 Aaron and Sjors also provide some updates about the show, and what that means moving forward.

 Finally, Sjors briefly mentions some notable Bitcoin Core updates that were recently merged.

 For more information on the invalid block, also see: https://b10c.me/observations/07-invalid-block-809478/

46:48

Ep. 83 Aug 17, 2023

Episode 83: The Milk Sad Vulnerability

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 Addendum 2023-08-18: The Mersenne Twister pseudo-random number generated was not intended to be cryptographically secure. So my claim that it was thought to be secure was incorrect. It’s simply the wrong tool for the job (of creating a private key with real money at stake). 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

30:29

Ep. 82 Jul 11, 2023

Episode 82: Scaling to Billions of Users

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

39:02

Ep. 81 Jun 26, 2023

Episode 81: Bitcoin Core 25.0

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

50:00

Ep. 80 Jun 13, 2023

Episode 80: Stratum V2

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://btcwip.com 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

49:31

May 23, 2023

Bitcoin, Explained 79: The Witness Discount

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

32:57

Ep. 78 May 8, 2023

Episode 78: Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (PSBTs) (And Dutch Auctions)

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron (@AaronvanW) and Sjors (@provoost) explain Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (PSBTs), discussing what problems they solve, how they work, and some of the ways they are used. In the last part of the episode, the hosts zoom in on one particular PSBT use case called Dutch Auctions, which Bitcoin Magazine recently used to sell ordinals. Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/ Sjors New Book: https://btcwip.com/ Don’t miss out on the biggest Bitcoin event of the year! B23 in Miami is coming up fast, get your tickets now! Lower your time preference and lock-in your BITCOIN 2023 conference tickets today! Use the code BMLIVE for a 10% Discount! - https://b.tc/conference/2023

36:52

Ep. 77 Apr 24, 2023

Episode 77: Peer-to-peer Encryption

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors discuss BIP 324, the proposal by Dhruv, Pieter Wuille and Tim Ruffing to add peer-to-peer (P2P) encryption to the Bitcoin protocol. They explain why this is needed, how it would work, and which problems it would, and wouldn’t solve. Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/ Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425 Don’t miss out on the biggest Bitcoin event of the year! B23 in Miami is coming up fast, get your tickets now! Lower your time preference and lock-in your BITCOIN 2023 conference tickets today! Use the code BMLIVE for a 10% Discount! - https://b.tc/conference/2023

50:53

Ep. 76 Apr 15, 2023

Bitcoin, Explained 76: Stamps (And the Invalid Block Caused by It)

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors explain Stamps, a new(?) protocol to upload images onto the Bitcoin blockchain, which end up in the UTXO set. To learn more about some of the concepts mentioned in this episode, also check out episode 15 (Utreexo), episode 61 (OP_RETURN), episode 72 (Inscriptions) and episode 75 (Multisig). Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/ Sjors New Book: https://btcwip.com/ Don’t miss out on the biggest Bitcoin event of the year! B23 in Miami is coming up fast, get your tickets now! Lower your time preference and lock-in your BITCOIN 2023 conference tickets today! Use the code BMLIVE for a 10% Discount! - https://b.tc/conference/2023

52:30

Ep. 75 Mar 31, 2023

Bitcoin, Explained 75: Multisig (And Musig)

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors discuss multi-signature (multisig), and the various ways that Bitcoin enables multisig; from bare multisig, to P2SH, SegWit, Taproot, and finally Musig, as well as some potential future solutions. Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/ Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425 Don’t miss out on the biggest Bitcoin event of the year! B23 in Miami is coming up fast, get your tickets now! Lower your time preference and lock-in your BITCOIN 2023 conference tickets today! Use the code BMLIVE for a 10% Discount! - https://b.tc/conference/2023

43:24

Ep. 74 Mar 17, 2023

Bitcoin, Explained 74: P2SH

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors explain pay-to-script-hash (P2SH), which allows bitcoin to be sent to and from the hash of a script. Besides (the current implementation of) P2SH itself, Aaron and Sjors also discuss some alternatives that were proposed around the time that P2SH was adopted in 2012. For further reading on the history of P2SH, also see “The Battle for P2SH: The Untold History of Bitcoin’s First War” Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/ Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425 Don’t miss out on the biggest Bitcoin event of the year! B23 in Miami is coming up fast, get your tickets now! Lower your time preference and lock-in your BITCOIN 2023 conference tickets today! Use the code BMLIVE for a 10% Discount!

40:42

Ep. 73 Feb 24, 2023

Bitcoin, Explained 73: OP_VAULT

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors explain OP_VAULT, a proposed op code that would enable an elegant type of vaults through Bitcoin’s scripting language. For more information, also see: https://jameso.be/vaults.pdf https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/c589490f98ba1b0c606d0e2030463f1fde54b786/bip-vaults.mediawiki === Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/ Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425 Don’t miss out on the biggest Bitcoin event of the year! B23 in Miami is coming up fast, get your tickets now! Lower your time preference and lock-in your BITCOIN 2023 conference tickets today! Use the code BMLIVE for a 10% Discount! https://b.tc/conference/2023

40:34

Ep. 72 Feb 9, 2023

Bitcoin, Explained 72: Inscriptions

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors explain Inscriptions, a new method to upload arbitrary data onto the Bitcoin blockchain. Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/ Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425 Don’t miss out on the biggest Bitcoin event of the year! B23 in Miami is coming up fast, get your tickets now! Lower your time preference and lock-in your BITCOIN 2023 conference tickets today! Use the code BMLIVE for a 10% Discount! https://b.tc/conference/2023

32:58

Ep. 71 Jan 20, 2023

Bitcoin, Explained 71: Timelocks

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, Aaron and Sjors discuss the different types of timelocks available on Bitcoin (and what can go wrong when used incorrectly). Episode Sponsor: https://voltage.cloud/ Sjors New Book: Bitcoin: A Work In Progress Lower your time preference and lock-in your Bitcoin 2023 conference tickets today!!! Use promo code BMLIVE to save 10% off your conference tickets today!!! https://b.tc/conference/bitcoin2023 Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bitcoinmagazine https://twitter.com/videobitcoin