👉 Block 851078: Weekly Digest
Important news of the week without the bullshit.
News
- OpenSats announced its 5th wave of Bitcoin grants for 10 more Bitcoin projects. The non-profit also granted long-term support to rust-nostr maintainer Yuki Kishimoto and launched the OpenSats Education Initiative focused on supporting Bitcoin education and outreach worldwide.
- The US Government has agreed to release Samourai Wallet founder William Lonergan Hill (TDev) on bail, according to a letter filed on July 3rd. Hill is expected to appear in the Southern District of New York on July 9th or 10th, 2024.
- The German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) continued its seized bitcoin sell-off this week, mirroring similar actions by the U.S. government recently.
- Mt. Gox has finally begun its bitcoin repayments to creditors, ending a decade-long wait for some users.
- Coinbase has officially partnered with the U.S. Marshals Service, a part of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) that is responsible for managing seized and forfeited assets.
- Bitcoin Core announced a new security disclosure policy for publicizing security-critical bugs in Core versions that are End of Life (EOL) and no longer receive maintenance updates.
- The Danish Financial Supervisory Authority (DFSA) has denied reports suggesting that the regulator plans to ban personal (non-custodial) bitcoin wallets.
- Australia-based Bitcoin miner Iris Energy announced raising $413.4 million through stock offerings since mid-May to fund its 2024 expansion plan.
- Bitcoin mining and energy technology firm CleanSpark has acquired GRIID Infrastructure in an all-stock deal valued at $155 million.
- The Qualys Threat Research Unit (TRU) has discovered a remote unauthenticated code execution vulnerability in OpenSSH’s server (sshd) on glibc-based Linux systems. Bitcoiners running lightning nodes with remote SSH access are urged to update to v9.8p1 as soon as possible.
- The United States Supreme Court decisively overturned the Chevron deference last week.
- AU10TIX, an Israel-based ID verification and compliance platform hired to verify user identities at X since last September, reportedly left a set of administrative credentials exposed for over 18 months. These provided access to a logging platform containing links to identity documents, including user names, dates of birth, nationalities, ID numbers, and images of uploaded documents.
- A federal jury in Greensboro, North Carolina, convicted a 24-year-old Florida man for leading a conspiracy to attack and kidnap U.S. residents in their homes to steal their bitcoin and other digital assets.
- The two-factor authentication (2FA) app Authy leaked the phone numbers of 33 million users.
- ZapConf, a virtual conference focusing on the Lightning Network and Nostr, will take place on September 21-22, 2024.
- The next edition of the Bitcoin Atlantis conference is set to take place in 2028. The event organizers decided to align Bitcoin Atlantis with the Bitcoin halving cycle, making it a unique event every four years.
- BTCPay Server announced BTCPay Day Riga, which will happen right after the Baltic Honeybadger and Nostriga conferences on August 26, 2024.
Updates and releases
- COLDCARD Mk4 firmware v5.3.2 and Q firmware v1.2.2 have been released. It comes with NFC Push Tx, which enables the transmission of signed transactions to the blockchain via NFC and a web service.
- Bitcoin and Lightning Network node provider Nodl announced nodl One Mark 2 with a 2 TB SSD.
- Bitcoin Knots v27.1 has been released. It introduces several new features, various bug fixes, and performance improvements.
- Labelbase v2.2.2 is out. It comes with the ability to scan addresses from your favorite hardware wallet, QR codes from your mobile device, or even from a SATSCARD.
- LND v0.18.1-beta is a minor hot fix release that resolves an issue that arises when handling an error after attempting to broadcast transactions if a btcd backend with an older version (pre-v0.24.2) is used.
- Bitcoin Keeper v1.2.9 has been released with cached transactions, health check for all keys, timeline view, ability to backup wallet configurations in a PDF file, and other improvements.
- Lampo v24.06 is the latest release for an experimental, fast and modular Lightning Network implementation written in Rust.
- Burak announced Brollup v2, an improved version of Brollups. The developer says he has found a way to eliminate the need for a trusted setup.
- Ride The Lightning (RTL) v0.15.2-beta is a minor release addressing several technical issues occurring in installations on Umbrel.
- SeedHammer v1.3.1 has been released. This release removes support for the SH01 plate, the protective plate and switches to the SeedQR format.
- Lume, a cross-platform desktop client for the Nostr protocol, has released v4.0.13, which improves its performance, stability, search function, and adds several fixes.
- Nos.social, a nostr client with advanced user safety and moderation features, has released v0.1.19 to its TestFlight users.
- Phoenix Wallet and Server received a major upgrade with Bolt12 offers. New features include reusable, non-expiring payment requests, a contact list (Android only), and the ability to attach messages to payments.
- btcd v0.24.2: released with important security fixes. Full details will be disclosed in 90 days.
- OLYMPUS by ZEUS: Lightning node runners can now purchase channels directly from the OLYMPUS Lightning Service Provider (LSP).
- BTCPay Server is now compatible with Invoice Ninja for invoicing and billing. A detailed integration guide is available here.
- Boltz backend v3.7.1: now supports cooperative refunds for failed CLN transactions, labels for addresses and transactions, provides failure details in swap status, and more. The project’s license has changed to AGPLv3.
- Stack Duo Wallet v1.2.0: bitcoin users of Stack Duo can now use Tor support (.onion addresses), Replace-By-Fee (RBF), and Child Pays For Parent (CPFP) functionalities.
- Breez SDK Core v0.5.0 has been released with the Greenlight signer upgrade and several other improvements.
- Amber v1.0.9: The latest version of Nostr event signer for Android comes with notification improvements.
- zap.store v0.1.3 ships with multiple fixes and improvements.
- PyBLØCK v2.6 - a Bitcoin dashboard with a cypherpunk aesthetic, now includes bug fixes and Bolt 12, building on the latest Phoenixd release.
- BlueWallet v6.6.8 now allows sending and receiving transactions using BIP47 Reusable Payment Codes (PayNyms) and can also send funds to Silent Payment addresses.
- LNbits announced two development bounties for Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC).
- Satonomics is a new, free and open-source, Bitcoin-only, self-hostable suite of tools that computes, distributes, and displays on-chain data for free use.
- Braiins OS v24.04.2 comes with support for BHB68701-, BHB68703, and BHB68606 hashboards, and improvements in mining efficiency, model detection, and UX.
- BitBox02 firmware v9.19.0 now supports Bitcoin payment requests, multisig accounts at arbitrary keypaths, and spending UTXOs at high BIP-44 address indices.
- LDK Node v0.3.0 is the third minor release adds support for BOLT12 payments, Anchor channels, and sourcing inbound liquidity via LSPS2 just-in-time channels.
- Npub.pro has been launched. It let’s users create personal websites from their Nostr content. It’s free, open-source, and self-hostable.
- Stacker.news implemented the first stage of its wallet plans. The changes bring noticeable improvement to stackers using attached wallets.
- BitKit Wallet v1.0.2 is a maintenance release with a number of improvements and bug fixes.
- Payto is a Core Lightning (CLN) companion app that can pay to lightning address, LNURL, BIP353 (DNS Payment Instructions), and BOLT12 offers.
- Strike announced the BOLT 12 Playground, a hands-on testing environment for those interested in exploring BOLT 12.
- B2P Central is an aggregator of Bitcoin peer-to-peer buy and sell offers from Hodl Hodl, Paxful, Peach Bitcoin, LNp2pBot, and LocalCoinSwap.
- Fewsats is now open for business. It is a monetization platform for deploying digital content behind paywalls using L402 protocol.