Funding Bitcoin node security, testing, and maintenance @bitcoinbrink Blocking and tackling at @bitcoinoptech
Joined September 2018
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Mike Schmidt retweeted
Blog post with the context for how @Lightlike1 and I discovered this issue.
A new medium severity advisory has been posted: bitcoincore.org/en/2026/11/1…
Mike Schmidt retweeted
"Responses to Stagnation: The Reactionary and the Revolutionary" —A guest article by Adam Gibson, aka Waxwing
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Quantum Computing 101
A Bitcoin Security Consortium report, in collaboration with Presidio Bitcoin.
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Fuzzing not dead yet
> estimated overlap at roughly 60%. Regardless of which value is accurate, a substantial portion of vulnerabilities were discoverable by only LLMs or only fuzzing. While it is extremely promising that LLMs have become able to find so many vulnerabilities so quickly, fuzzing and LLMs are still complementary approaches
projectzero.google/2026/10/f…
Mike Schmidt retweeted
0xB10C (@0xB10C), Luke Carriere, and Sjors Provoost joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #430:
News
● Continued discussion of TCP hole punching for home nodes (1:28)
● BIP draft for standardized co-signer spending policies (30:51)
Changing consensus
● Continued discussion of BIP54 (57:26)
● Opt-in replay protection prototype (43:22)
● QSAVE for unmigrated coins (1:11:46)
● Proof-of-decay for unmigrated outputs (1:18:41)
● BIP300 bundle censorship (1:20:49)
Releases and release candidates
● LND v0.21.6-beta (1:25:37)
● Core Lightning 26.06.10 (1:26:54)
● BTCPay Server 2.4.7 (1:27:45)
Notable code and documentation changes
● Bitcoin Core #36539 (1:29:24)
● Bitcoin Core #35714 (1:31:44)
● Bitcoin Core #35492 (1:34:35)
● BIPs #2205 (1:35:53)
● Core Lightning #9419 (1:42:17)
● Core Lightning #9592 (1:43:38)
● LDK #5089 (1:46:30)
● LND #11456 (1:49:31)
● LND #11357 (1:50:38)
● LND #11413 (1:53:36)
● LND #11151 (1:55:42)
● Rust Bitcoin #7067 (1:58:00)
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #430 is here:
- summarizes continued discussion about using TCP hole punching to make nodes behind home routers reachable
- describes a draft BIP for standardizing the spending policies that co-signers enforce when emulating covenants
- follows up on continued discussion of BIP54
- links to an opt-in replay protection prototype
- summarizes a post-quantum transition that does not burn coins
- describes a 'Proof-of-decay' idea for unmigrated outputs
- notes the potential for BIP300 bundle censorship
- Optech Newsletter #430 Podcast
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Elias Rohrer (@_tnull), Greg Sanders (@theinstagibbs), Antoine Poinsot (@darosior), Oleksandr Kurbatov (@olkurbatov), and Nishant Bansal (@nishant282003) joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #429:
News
● Silent payments for multiparty wallets (41:18)
● CLN self-referential channel announcement DoS disclosure (52:57)
● Bitcoin Core security policy update (24:53)
Selected Q&A from Bitcoin Stack Exchange
● Why does Bitcoin use both a transaction ID and a witness transaction ID? (1:02:58)
● How to sign a MuSig with Bitcoin Core (1:07:54)
● What changed in Bitcoin P2P protocol version 70017 compared to 70016? (1:09:11)
Releases and release candidates
● Bitcoin Core 32.1 (35:56)
● Bitcoin Core 31.2 (39:18)
● Bitcoin Core 30.4 (40:42)
● Bitcoin Core 29.5 (40:53)
● Eclair 0.14.6 (1:12:37)
● LND v0.21.5-beta (1:13:36)
Notable code and documentation changes
● Bitcoin Core #36665 (3:43)
● Bitcoin Core #36667 (14:37)
● Bitcoin Core #36669 (19:02)
● BIPs #2130 (1:15:55)
● Core Lightning #9627 (1:17:33)
● Eclair #3417 (1:19:13)
● Eclair #3416 (1:26:02)
● LDK #5314 (1:28:48)
● LDK #5412 (1:31:27)
● LND #11164 (1:33:28)
● LND #11373 (1:36:17)
● BTCPay Server #7744 (1:38:59)
Mike Schmidt retweeted
UP TO DATE: Mike Schmidt, Executive Director of Brink (@bitcoinbrink), relays the latest on BIP54, a soft fork proposal to remove many “sharp edges” and minor vulnerabilities in the bitcoin protocol
BIP54 updates from the last several months of Consensus Cleanup work
Implementation progress:
Bitcoin Core: github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/p… (open) implements BIP54's rules without mainnet activation. Needs reviewers.
libbitcoin: github.com/libbitcoin/libbit… (merged)
rbitcoin: github.com/reardencode/rbitc… (draft, signet)
btcd: github.com/btcsuite/btcd/pul… (draft)
Research: Pieter Wuille published a proof, machine-checked in Lean, that BIP54's two timestamp rules together bound chain length for a given amount of work. delvingbitcoin.org/t/bounds-…
64-byte txs: Jeremy Rubin argued they may have legitimate uses (groups.google.com/g/bitcoind…) and wrote up an alternative that invalidates merkle internal nodes instead (groups.google.com/g/bitcoind…). BIP54's rationale now acknowledges that option but still prefers the simple ban.
BIP54 tracker for forward-compatibility for miner coinbase locktimes: mainnet.observer/charts/tran…
Other discussions:
Antoine Riard's response to Mark Friedenbach's objection that fixing timewarp forecloses forward blocks groups.google.com/g/bitcoind…
An idea to split BIP54 into one BIP per fix, which the authors declined github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull…
Testnet5 (BIP95): enforces BIP54 from block 1 groups.google.com/g/bitcoind…
bip54.org/ is updated to reflect these.
Mike Schmidt retweeted
If I wanted to destroy Bitcoin, I would just tell everyone the software is perfect and needs no work done on it.
Mike Schmidt retweeted
This team has done a lot of work in the last quarter. We share updates weekly, meet monthly, met in person with many from the developer community, and are putting our funding to work. Our work has significantly increased my confidence in Bitcoin Security.
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Bitcoin Optech newsletter #429 is here:
- describes a protocol for creating silent payment transactions from multiparty wallets
- summarizes the responsible disclosure of a denial-of-service vulnerability that affected older versions of Core Lightning
- explains Bitcoin Core’s updated security policy for easily discoverable vulnerabilities
- summarizes popular Q&A from Stack Exchange
- Bitcoin Core 32.1
- Optech Newsletter #429 Podcast
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Two months ago, alongside @Coinbase and @danboneh, we co-hosted a post-quantum workshop for cryptographers, protocol engineers, hardware wallet manufacturers, and institutional voices working on Bitcoin’s preparedness for a CRQC.
Today, we’re sharing transcripts from the event and a blog post summarizing the discussions: lclhost.org/blog/quantum-wor…
A special thank you to our speakers and session leaders: @danboneh, @asanso, @LindellYehuda, Pieter Wuille, @conduition_io, @n1ckler, @P3b7_, and Justin of Localhost, everyone who traveled to attend, and the @MARAFoundation_ for sponsoring our post-event dinner.
We hope this workshop leads to more in-person opportunities to study Bitcoin’s Post-Quantum Problem (PQP).
Finally, thank you to @btctranscripts for hosting the transcripts of every talk and session: btctranscripts.com/quantum-w…
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Coinbase CSO Jeff Lunglhofer performed an AI scan of the Bitcoin Core codebase with 16 agents across 5 of the top models for a week.
He found just two minor items, both now resolved and disclosed responsibly.
Bitcoin Core is some of the most reviewed code in the world.
We were curious how our frontier AI model would handle it. Last month we ran 16 agents across 5 of the top models for a week to look for issues in Bitcoin Core v32.0rc1
Impressively, they surfaced two minor items - both now disclosed responsibly.
Agentic teams have been a huge unlock so far for our security efficiency. They're also remarkable to watch.
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Bitcoin Core is some of the most reviewed code in the world.
We were curious how our frontier AI model would handle it. Last month we ran 16 agents across 5 of the top models for a week to look for issues in Bitcoin Core v32.0rc1
Impressively, they surfaced two minor items - both now disclosed responsibly.
Agentic teams have been a huge unlock so far for our security efficiency. They're also remarkable to watch.
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Mike Schmidt broke down Bitcoin Core v32.1 and surfaced something important: Core updated its disclosure policy specifically because LLM tools are making bugs easier to find.
"Core's recently updated policy fast-tracks the disclosure of easily discoverable vulnerabilities. LLM-assisted security scans helped motivate the change."
All three vulnerabilities disclosed today were found by Project Loupe, an AI-powered scanner built at Spiral. If defenders can find them with LLMs, attackers can too.
Beyond security, v32.1 packs 715 merged PRs from 111 authors. Fee estimation now factors in live mempool conditions. Initial sync is 1.2-3x faster. The libevent dependency is fully replaced with in-house code. Stratum v2 keeps advancing.
The infrastructure keeps getting stronger.
Bitcoin Core v32.1: a deeper look
First, why no 32.0?
It was tagged on October 21 but never fully announced or released. A remotely triggerable TCP crash was reported on October 23 and 32.1 shipped on October 27 (yesterday) with that fix and two others.
I'll dig into the security updates, but this release also represents months of testing, maintenance, and work to make Bitcoin easier to verify and use.
What went into these v32.1 changes and what do Bitcoin users get from them?
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Adam Gibson, Vincenzo Palazzo (@PalazzoVincenzo), and João Dias (@jaoNoctus) joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #428:
News
● Trust-minimized exits from a single-issuer layer 2 (1:32)
● Descriptor syntax for hash preimages (18:03)
Changes to services and client software
● Ibis Wallet v5.0-beta released (26:31)
● Landfall wallet for Lightning mining payouts (28:57)
● rbitcoin 0.8.0 released (38:44)
Releases and release candidates
● Eclair 0.14.4 (43:18)
● BDK chain 0.23.4 (45:37)
● LND v0.21.5-beta.rc1 (47:09)
Notable code and documentation changes
● Eclair #3409 (50:16)
● Eclair #3411 (52:20)
● LDK #5126 (55:03)
● LND #10919 (56:19)
● BTCPay Server #7679 (1:01:06)
● BTCPay Server #7684 (1:02:39)
● BDK #2325 (1:04:18)
● BOLTs #1357 (1:07:13)
● BOLTs #1352 (1:10:03)
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Bitcoin Core v32.1 was released!
It is available from: bitcoincore.org/en/download/
Release notes: bitcoincore.org/en/releases/…
Mike Schmidt retweeted
An exploited timewarp attack (which BIP54 mitigates) could result in up to 6 blocks/sec, decades of subsidy mined in weeks, node resource exhaustion, network centralization, timelocks disrupted, funds potentially lost, endless reorgs, etc. This is bad for Bitcoin as money.
Mike Schmidt retweeted
Absolute full house for @bitschmidty 🔥
He walked through the actual steps Bitcoin Core developers are taking to make Bitcoin better money, and cleared up the myth that Core is busy with things plebs don't care about.
Great to see a packed room getting it straight from someone who actually knows what he's talking about.
