Luke Childs lukechilds

💥 Kapow: Bitcoin Finality Guarantees for the Liquid Network

Kapow (Kheckpoint-Anchored Proof-of-Work) introduces a Bitcoin-backed checkpointing mechanism for the Liquid Network. It provides Bitcoin-equivalent finality guarantees to Liquid blocks on a ~10-minute interval, backed by the full power of Bitcoin's proof-of-work. Once a Liquid block has been checkpointed on Bitcoin, it cannot be reorged by the Liquid block producers without them also performing a reorg (51% attack) on Bitcoin itself.

This would be especially beneficial if Liquid moves to a BitVM-based bridge, since Liquid's current consensus mechanism would become a weak point in the trust model and undermine the security of the BitVM bridge, invalidating its 1-of-n trust assumptions.

The Problem

Liquid's original design made a sensible tradeoff: since the peg itself depended on a federation with an honest-majority trust assumption, Liquid consensus could also depend on the same federation. Adding a separate proof-of-work or merge-mined con

Ecash mints funded with Spillman channels: The ultimate nodeless Lightning wallet

Overview

This proposal introduces a self-custodial credit system that sits in front of an existing ecash mint. The users balance is held in a trustless credit contract that can be instantly swapped for ecash tokens offchain at the time of payment. Custodial risk only exists while payments are in flight, which is usually seconds, and only for the amount currently being transacted. The balance is always self-custodial and if the mint disappears or is uncooperative the user can unilaterally exit and reclaim their credits onchain.

The protocol works on Bitcoin today and does not require a soft fork or any new opcodes. Infact it doesn't require any opcodes at all. The protocol is almost entirely off chain, every possible way to execute the trustless credit contract results in a MuSig2 taproot key path spend onchain, no Bitcoin Script required.

The problem

Generate pretty markdown release notes from GitHub compare view

Go to GitHub compare view between two release tags and dump the following in devtools:

copy(Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('#commits_bucket .Box-row')).map(e => {
    const commitTitle = e.querySelector('.Details p').textContent.replace(/…/g, '').trim();
    const authors = Array.from(e.querySelectorAll('.commit-author')).map(e => '@' + e.textContent);
    const commitUrl = e.querySelector('a[href*=\'/commit/\']').href;
 return `- ${commitTitle} - ${authors.join(' ')} ${commitUrl}`;

Installs all cross platform emulators for use with docker buildx

docker run -it --rm --privileged tonistiigi/binfmt --install all

Install Umbrel v0.3.7

sudo apt update -y
sudo apt install -y fswatch jq rsync curl
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sudo sh
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.28.2/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo mkdir ~/umbrel

How to install Tor on your system

macOS

Open the "Terminal" app on your Mac and install Homebrew by running:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Install Tor by running:

brew install tor

Fix Umbrel Background Services

If you aren't able to run OTA updates, you can do the following to resolve the situation:

Umbrel OS (Raspberry Pi)

If you're running the normal Umbrel OS install on a Raspberry Pi you can run this in a terminal on a computer connected to the same network as your Umbrel:

ssh -t umbrel@umbrel.local "mkdir -p umbrel/logs && sudo systemctl restart umbrel-startup"

Fix OTA updates on custom Umbrel installs

⚠️ Important: You only need to follow these instructions if you have a custom Umbrel install. If you're running Umbrel OS on a Raspberry Pi you can safely ignore this.

Custom Umbrel OS installs that started Umbrel with sudo scripts/start in an SSH sessions and then closed the SSH session encountered a bug where the OTA update script would not work due to missing file descriptors.

This has now been fixed (getumbrel/umbrel#269), however the update process for existing users involves manual steps.

	Hey, I'm lukechilds-2123375 and I have contributed to the Citrea Risc0 to BitVM Circuit MPC Phase2 Trusted Setup ceremony.
	The following are my contribution signatures:

	Circuit # 1 (verify_for_guest)
	Contributor # 15
	Contribution Hash: 9ec2d2bd 4881ff17 d95a113b a26f17a3
	f8043a64 fed1a53d b4c50bdc fe022c55
	bc5da69e b3d6f697 94b3fd03 ba69d77e
	d012724f 1e3be2b8 729b1a35 3dc86aff

	#!/usr/bin/env bash
	#
	# Setup or remove an SSH hidden service on Debian based systems.
	#
	# Usage:
	#
	# Setup SSH hidden service:
	# $ curl -Ls https://git.io/tor-ssh \| bash -s -- --setup-tor-ssh
	#
	# Remove SSH hidden service: