Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #381 Recap

In Optech Recap #381, Mike Schmidt, along with guests Antoine Poinsot and ZmnSCPxj, discusses modeling stale block rates and mining centralization, highlighting how block propagation time affects miner revenue and the disproportionate advantage larger miners gain. They explore private key handover for collaborative closure, a technique using Taproot and MuSig2 for efficient fund resolution, particularly in Lightning Network HTLCs. The podcast also covers updates to services and client software, including the launch of Arcade (an ARC protocol implementation), MemPal (a mempool monitoring mobile app), Miniscript Studio (a web-based policy IDE), Phoenix Wallet's addition of Taproot channels, Nunchuk 2.0's new features, and the announcement of a Lightning Network gossip traffic analysis tool. Notable code and documentation changes in Bitcoin Core, Core Lightning, LDK, and BOLTs are reviewed, focusing on improvements in areas such as Stratum V2 client connections, pathfinding algorithms, reconnection logic, and authentication verification.