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| 1 | +--- |
| 2 | +title: 'Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #259' |
| 3 | +permalink: /en/newsletters/2023/07/12/ |
| 4 | +name: 2023-07-12-newsletter |
| 5 | +slug: 2023-07-12-newsletter |
| 6 | +type: newsletter |
| 7 | +layout: newsletter |
| 8 | +lang: en |
| 9 | +--- |
| 10 | +This week's newsletter describes a proposal to remove details from the |
| 11 | +LN specification that are no longer relevant to modern nodes and |
| 12 | +includes the penultimate entry in our limited weekly series about |
| 13 | +mempool policy, plus our regular sections summarizing a Bitcoin Core PR |
| 14 | +Review Club meeting, announcing new releases and release candidates, and |
| 15 | +describing notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software. |
| 16 | + |
| 17 | +## News |
| 18 | + |
| 19 | +- **LN specification clean up proposed:** Rusty Russell [posted][russell |
| 20 | + clean up] to the Lightning-Dev mailing list a link to a [PR][bolts |
| 21 | + #1092] where he proposes to remove some features that are no longer |
| 22 | + supported by modern LN implementations and to assume other features |
| 23 | + will always be supported. Related to the proposed changes, Russell also |
| 24 | + provides the results of a survey he ran of public node features |
| 25 | + according to their gossip messages. His results imply that nearly all |
| 26 | + nodes support the following features: |
| 27 | + |
| 28 | + - *Variable-sized onion messages:* made part of the specification in |
| 29 | + 2019 (see [Newsletter #58][news58 bolts619]) around the same time as |
| 30 | + the specification was updated to use Type-Length-Value (TLV) fields. |
| 31 | + This replaced the original format for encrypted onion routing that |
| 32 | + required each hop to use a fixed-length message and limited the number |
| 33 | + of hops to 20. The variable-sized format makes it much easier to |
| 34 | + relay arbitrary data to specific hops, with the only downside being |
| 35 | + that the overall message size remains constant, so any increase in |
| 36 | + the amount of data sent decreases the maximum number of hops. |
| 37 | + |
| 38 | + - *Gossip queries:* made part of the specification in 2018 (see [BOLTs #392][]). |
| 39 | + This allows a node to request from its peers only a subset of gossip |
| 40 | + messages sent by other nodes on the network. For example, a node |
| 41 | + may request only recent gossip updates, ignoring older updates to |
| 42 | + save bandwidth and reduce processing time. |
| 43 | + |
| 44 | + - *Data loss protection:* made part of the specification in 2017 (see |
| 45 | + [BOLTs #240][]). Nodes using this feature send information about |
| 46 | + their latest channel state when they reconnect. This may allow a |
| 47 | + node to detect that it has lost data, and it encourages a node that |
| 48 | + has not lost data to close the channel in its latest state. See |
| 49 | + [Newsletter #31][news31 data loss] for additional details. |
| 50 | + |
| 51 | + - *Static remote-party keys:* made part of the specification in 2019 |
| 52 | + (see [Newsletter #67][news67 bolts642]), this allows a node to |
| 53 | + request that every channel update commit to sending the node's |
| 54 | + non-[HTLC][topic htlc] funds to the same address. Previously, a |
| 55 | + different address was used in every channel update. After this |
| 56 | + change, a node that opted into this protocol and lost data would |
| 57 | + almost always eventually receive at least some of their funds to their |
| 58 | + chosen address, such as an address in their [HD wallet][topic bip32]. |
| 59 | + |
| 60 | + Initial replies to the clean-up proposal PR were positive. |
| 61 | + |
| 62 | +## Waiting for confirmation #8: Policy Proposals |
| 63 | + |
| 64 | +_A limited weekly [series][policy series] about transaction relay, |
| 65 | +mempool inclusion, and mining transaction selection---including why |
| 66 | +Bitcoin Core has a more restrictive policy than allowed by consensus and |
| 67 | +how wallets can use that policy most effectively._ |
| 68 | + |
| 69 | +{% include specials/policy/en/09-proposals.md %} |
| 70 | + |
| 71 | +## Bitcoin Core PR Review Club |
| 72 | + |
| 73 | +*In this monthly section, we summarize a recent [Bitcoin Core PR Review Club][] |
| 74 | +meeting, highlighting some of the important questions and answers. Click on a |
| 75 | +question below to see a summary of the answer from the meeting.* |
| 76 | + |
| 77 | +FIXME:LarryRuane |
| 78 | + |
| 79 | +{% include functions/details-list.md |
| 80 | + q0="FIXME" |
| 81 | + a0="FIXME" |
| 82 | + a0link="https://bitcoincore.reviews/27600#l-33FIXME" |
| 83 | +%} |
| 84 | + |
| 85 | +## Releases and release candidates |
| 86 | + |
| 87 | +*New releases and release candidates for popular Bitcoin infrastructure |
| 88 | +projects. Please consider upgrading to new releases or helping to test |
| 89 | +release candidates.* |
| 90 | + |
| 91 | +- [LND v0.16.4-beta][] is a maintenance release of this LN node software |
| 92 | + that fixes a memory leak that may affect some users. |
| 93 | + |
| 94 | +## Notable code and documentation changes |
| 95 | + |
| 96 | +*Notable changes this week in [Bitcoin Core][bitcoin core repo], [Core |
| 97 | +Lightning][core lightning repo], [Eclair][eclair repo], [LDK][ldk repo], |
| 98 | +[LND][lnd repo], [libsecp256k1][libsecp256k1 repo], [Hardware Wallet |
| 99 | +Interface (HWI)][hwi repo], [Rust Bitcoin][rust bitcoin repo], [BTCPay |
| 100 | +Server][btcpay server repo], [BDK][bdk repo], [Bitcoin Improvement |
| 101 | +Proposals (BIPs)][bips repo], [Lightning BOLTs][bolts repo], and |
| 102 | +[Bitcoin Inquisition][bitcoin inquisition repo].* |
| 103 | + |
| 104 | +- [Bitcoin Core #27869][] wallet: Give deprecation warning when loading a legacy wallet FIXME:adamjonas |
| 105 | + |
| 106 | +{% include references.md %} |
| 107 | +{% include linkers/issues.md v=2 issues="1092,392,240,27869" %} |
| 108 | +[news58 bolts619]: /en/newsletters/2019/08/07/#bolts-619 |
| 109 | +[policy series]: /en/blog/waiting-for-confirmation/ |
| 110 | +[news31 data loss]: /en/newsletters/2019/01/29/#fn:fn-data-loss-protect |
| 111 | +[news67 bolts642]: /en/newsletters/2019/10/09/#bolts-642 |
| 112 | +[lnd v0.16.4-beta]: https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/releases/tag/v0.16.4-beta |
| 113 | +[russell clean up]: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2023-June/004001.html |
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