Socratic Seminar #5

Inspired by Bitdevs NY, this is an event for those interested in discussing and participating in the research and development of Bitcoin and related protocols. Unlike the monthly speaker event, the Socratic Seminar events are formatted to foster debate, information sharing and lively discussion.

Discussion topics from a variety of sources are collated by meetup members in the weeks preceding the events. We investigate pull requests in the Bitcoin Core, lnd, grin and other relevant repositories; we study network statistics, research papers, technical blog posts and other interesting content. To complete the meeting, members present open source projects, companies, research and other relevant materials. A feedback and Q&A section follow.

A newsletter is sent out the day of the event which outlines discussion topics. Archives of discussion topics and presentations can be found in the event descriptions of past meetups. The discussion portion of the event is NEVER recorded. It is recommended that you have a firm grasp of the basics of Bitcoin in order to extract the most value from our Socratic events.

Please contact the organizers if you'd like to present at a future Socratic event or have a recommended topic for discussion: leishman3 at gmail. There are different requirements for presentation depending on the type of project.

Tentative Topics for Discussion:

Bitcoin Core

Add ability to convert solvability info to descriptor
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/14477

Sighash Updates
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2018-November/016488.html

Deprecate “generate” RPC method
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/14468

Key Origin Support
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/14150

Never bind INADDR_ANY by default,
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/14532

Fix detection of copyright holders
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/14785

And more...

Lightning

New LND 5.1-beta release
https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/releases

LND Remote signer
https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/issues/2081

LND Data loss protection merged
https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/pull/1937

CPFP Lightning Proposal
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2018-November/001666.html

C-Lightning Plugin subsystem
https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/pull/2075

And more...

News

Blockstream open sources block explorer
https://github.com/Blockstream/esplora

Vertcoin 51% Attacked
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/2018/12/03/long-tail-cryptocurrency-is-51-attacked-vertcoin-edition/

Simplicity Language Release
https://blockstream.com/2018/11/28/simplicity-github/

Event Stream Vuln
https://github.com/dominictarr/event-stream/issues/116

Meshcollider is New Wallet Maintainer
https://twitter.com/meshcollider/status/1071244022436392960

Stats

LN Stats
https://bitcoinvisuals.com/lightning

Bitcoin network stats
https://dashboard.bitcoinops.org/

Largest ever UTXO
https://twitter.com/khannib/status/1063068406981767170