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- This Week in Bitcoin (November 26th, 2022)
This Week in Bitcoin (November 26th, 2022)
What is up you beautiful people!
FLets jump into the latest in Bitcoin! But first. Shoutout to The Stacks Foundation for sponsoring this podcast. If you want to get started building on Stacks and push the mission forward of a user-owned internet with Bitcoin as the base layer. Check the links below. Learn Clarity: https://start.stacks.org/ Learn more about Stacks: https://stacks.co/ Apply for a grant: https://stacks.org/grants
Now lets jump in and get updated on the latest. Starting with Bitcoin mainchain.Catch the podcast on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or Fountain.
Bitcoin
Could the biggest thing to happen to Bitcoin be on Avalanche?
I know that sounds crazy. I've been intrigued by the idea of trustless Bitcoin bridges and how the landscape might look when an active ecosystem with lots of apps integrates with a really good bridge solution (Peg-in and out seamlessly). This is something that Stacks is working on with sBTC. Avalanche might have the best version yet.
LayerZero is their solution to connect all chains seamlessly. Starting with EVM chains. Last week they announced BTC.b, A Bitcoin derivative that can be spent across the myriad of EVM chains. It looks to me to be the best bridge to date connected to an ecosystem people might actually use. I'm still not personally fond of that ecosystem and care to use it, but something i'll be watching develop. Tweet
Bitcoin Core version 24.0 was released this week and it brought one of the more controversial updates as of late. The main point of contention was around changing a setting that affects the mempool and replace-by-fee. The mempool is where unconfirmed transactions live, and replace-by-fee is a feature to up the fee you want to pay and increase the chances your TX gets picked up by a miner. The reasons why are a little in the weeds but this tweet thread gives an excellent ELI5 breakdown.
Stacks
Stacks frens were largely quiet this week
One big update though comes from the Gamma team who run the largest NFT marketplace on Stacks. This week they announced integrations with Ethereum. You can now connect your ETH wallet and showcase your ETH NFT's directly on your Gamma profile. It syncs up with your .btc name as well so your BNS handle can be your front page showing a more complete view of your NFT collection.
They also announced they will allow Ethereum users to create collections with their creator tools. This is a huge first step to start blurring the line between the ETH and BTC ecosystems. Check out the announcement here.
The vote to update DeFi platform ALEX's tokenomics starts this week. Follow ALEX Twitter for the latest.
The Stacks Ventures Accelerator applications are open for the next month or so. If you are building something on Bitcoin, Stacks, or Lightning. Hit me up, I'd love to talk and learn more.
Lightning
Lot's of infrasturcture work contining on Lightning.
Torq released an update to their app on the Umbrel store. This gives Lightning node operators more data and analytics into their nodes and channels.
BTCPayServer hits version 1.7. This app is one of the most popular is use today to receive Bitcoin for payments from your own node. In this update they release a new unified QR code that allows the wallet to handle weather you want to pay with on-chain BTC or Lightning. Cash App released a similiar feature last month. Other updates include
Dergigi wrote a great short piece on the problem with Web2 using attention as currency and why a value-enabled web powered by Bitcoin has the potential to fix that. I've come to the same conclusion. Apps like Mash and Alby are the first examples of what a frictionless internet of value looks like. Expect it'll be normal to tip an article author a penny for a good read. That's a powerful flywheel at scale. Read the post here on Stacker News.
RSK
Mostly quiet on the RSK front.
One noteworthy video to watch is with Sergio Lerner, one of the chief architects of the RSK protocol and Edan Yago from Sovryn. Always nice to see two Bitcoin OG's chop it up in an interview. I especially like these two gents as they are pushing forward the Bitcoin ecosystem but don't belong to the dogmatic Bitcoin maxi camp. Check out the 10 minute video on YouTube.
Blockstream
Bitcoin layers incoming
Somehow I missed that Blockstream announced a new smart contract programming language. Called Simplicity, This is part of their new initiative called Build on L2 focused on attracting devs to the Bitcoin ecosystem. Here's a short video of Adam Back describing the language.
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