Newsletters: add 237 (2023-02-08)

Author: harding

_posts/en/newsletters/2023-02-08-newsletter.md

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+---
+title: 'Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #237'
+permalink: /en/newsletters/2023/02/08/
+name: 2023-02-08-newsletter
+slug: 2023-02-08-newsletter
+type: newsletter
+layout: newsletter
+lang: en
+---
+This week's newsletter summarizes a discussion about storing data in
+transaction witnesses and references a conversation about mitigating LN
+jamming.  Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a
+Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of new releases and
+release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular
+Bitcoin infrastructure software.
+
+## News
+
+- **Discussion about storing data in the block chain:** users of a new
+  project recently began storing large amounts of data in the witness
+  data for segwit v1 ([taproot][topic taproot]) transactions.   Robert
+  Dickinson [posted][dickinson ordinal] to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list
+  to inquire about whether a size limit should be imposed to discourage
+  such data storage.
+
+    Andrew Poelstra [replied][poelstra ordinal] that there is no
+    effective way to prevent data storage.  Adding new restrictions to
+    prevent unwanted data storage in witnesses would undermine
+    advantages discussed during taproot's design (see [Newsletter
+    #65][news65 tapscript]) and would likely only result in the data
+    being stored in other ways.  Those other ways might raise costs for
+    those generating the data---but probably not by enough to
+    significantly discourage the behavior---and the alternative storage
+    methods might create new problems for traditional Bitcoin users.
+
+- **Summary of call about mitigating LN jamming:** Carla Kirk-Cohen and
+  Clara Shikhelman [posted][ckccs jamming] to the Lightning-Dev mailing
+  list a summary of a recent video conversation about attempts to
+  address [channel jamming attacks][topic channel jamming attacks].
+  Topics discussed included upgrade mechanism tradeoffs, a simple
+  proposal for upfront fees derived from a recent paper (see [Newsletter
+  #226][news226 jam]), the CircuitBreaker software (see [Newsletter
+  #230][news230 jam]), an update on reputation credentials (see
+  [Newsletter #228][news228 jam]), and related work from the Lightning
+  Service Provider (LSP) specification working group.  See the mailing
+  list post for extended summaries and a [transcript][jam xs].
+
+    Future video meetings are planned for every two weeks; watch the
+    Lightning-Dev mailing list for announcements of upcoming meetings.
+
+## Bitcoin Core PR Review Club
+
+*In this monthly section, we summarize a recent [Bitcoin Core PR Review Club][]
+meeting, highlighting some of the important questions and answers.  Click on a
+question below to see a summary of the answer from the meeting.*
+
+FIXME is a PR by FIXME that FIXME:LarryRuane
+
+{% include functions/details-list.md
+  q0="FIXME"
+  a0="FIXME"
+  a0link="https://bitcoincore.reviews/FIXME#l-FIXME"
+%}
+
+<!-- FIXME:harding to add releases/rc if any on Tuesday -->
+
+## Notable code and documentation changes
+
+*Notable changes this week in [Bitcoin Core][bitcoin core repo], [Core
+Lightning][core lightning repo], [Eclair][eclair repo], [LDK][ldk repo],
+[LND][lnd repo], [libsecp256k1][libsecp256k1 repo], [Hardware Wallet
+Interface (HWI)][hwi repo], [Rust Bitcoin][rust bitcoin repo], [BTCPay
+Server][btcpay server repo], [BDK][bdk repo], [Bitcoin Improvement
+Proposals (BIPs)][bips repo], and [Lightning BOLTs][bolts repo].*
+
+- [Bitcoin Core #25880][] p2p: Make stalling timeout adaptive during IBD FIXME:Xekyo
+
+- [Core Lightning #5679][] sql plugin FIXME:adamjonas
+
+- [Core Lightning #5821][] adds `preapproveinvoice` (pre-approve
+  invoice) and `preapprovekeysend` (pre-approve keysend) RPCs that allow
+  the caller to send either a [BOLT11][] invoice or a [keysend][topic
+  spontaneous payments] payment details to Core Lightning's signing module
+  (`hsmd`) to verify the module is willing to sign the payment.  For
+  some applications, such as those where the amount of money which can
+  be spent is rate limited, asking for pre-approval might produce fewer
+  problems than simply attempting the payment and dealing with failure.
+
+- [Core Lightning #5849][] makes backend changes that allow a node to
+  handle over 100,000 peers each with one channel.  Although someone
+  running such a node in production is not likely in the near
+  future---it would take over a dozen entire blocks to just open that
+  many channels---testing the behavior helped the developer make several
+  performance improvements.
+
+- [Core Lightning #5892][] updates CLN's implementation of the
+  [offers][topic offers] protocol based on compatibility testing
+  performed by a developer working on Eclair's implementation.
+
+- [Eclair #2565][] now requests that funds from a closed channel be sent
+  to a new onchain address, rather than an address which was generated
+  when the channel was funded.  This may decrease [output linking][topic
+  output linking], which helps improve user privacy.  An exception to
+  this policy is when the user enables the LN protocol option
+  `upfront-shutdown-script`, which is a request sent to the channel
+  partner at funding time to only use the closing address specified at
+  that time (see [Newsletter #158][news158 upfront] for details).
+
+- [LND #7252][] adds support for using Sqlite as LND's database backend.
+  This is currently only supported for new installs of LND as there is
+  no code for migrating an existing database.
+
+- [LND #6527][] adds the ability to encrypt the server's on-disk TLS
+  key.  LND uses TLS for authenticating remote connections to its
+  control channel, i.e. to run APIs.  The TLS key will be encrypted
+  using data from the node's wallet, so unlocking the wallet will unlock
+  the TLS key.  Unlocking the wallet is already required to send and
+  accept payments.
+
+{% include references.md %}
+{% include linkers/issues.md v=2 issues="25880,5679,5821,5849,5892,2565,7252,6527" %}
+[news158 upfront]: /en/newsletters/2021/07/21/#eclair-1846
+[dickinson ordinal]: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-January/021370.html
+[poelstra ordinal]: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-January/021372.html
+[news65 tapscript]: /en/newsletters/2019/09/25/#tapscript-resource-limits
+[ckccs jamming]: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2023-January/003834.html
+[news226 jam]: /en/newsletters/2022/11/16/#paper-about-channel-jamming-attacks
+[news230 jam]: /en/newsletters/2022/12/14/#local-jamming-to-prevent-remote-jamming
+[news228 jam]: /en/newsletters/2022/11/30/#reputation-credentials-proposal-to-mitigate-ln-jamming-attacks
+[jam xs]: https://github.com/ClaraShk/LNJamming/blob/main/meeting-transcripts/23-01-23-transcript.md