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bitcoin++ Austin 2024, bitcoin script edition

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Day 1 Wed · May 1 Day 2 Thu · May 2 Day 3 Fri · May 3 Day 4 Sat · May 4

Doors9:00 AM

Breakfast9:30 AM

Lunch12:30 PM

Coffee3:30 PM

Time

Main Stage

Talks Stage

Workshops Stage

9AM

10AM

11AM

12PM

1PM

2PM

3PM

4PM

5PM

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keynote

Opening Remarks

niftynei

Time: Wed, May 1 · 9:45 AM – 10:00 AM
Location: Main Stage
Type: keynote
Duration: 15m

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Speakers

niftynei

bitcoin++

X Nostr GitHub Instagram Website

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talk

The Great Script Restoration Project

Rusty Russell

Time: Wed, May 1 · 10:00 AM – 10:45 AM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 45m

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You're probably aware that v0.3.1 of Bitcoin disabled numerous Script opcodes, most famously OP_CAT. Bringing them back unlocks a great deal of power, and there are a few additional opcodes that complement them well in a modern Bitcoin system (such as key addition). This talk aims to present a coherent model for making Bitcoin Script as capable as I think it can be, while avoiding the pitfalls which caused it to be hobbled in the first place.

Speakers

Rusty Russell

Blockstream

X Nostr GitHub Website

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keynote

Introducing BitVMX: A CPU for Universal Computation on Bitcoin

Sergio Lerner

Time: Wed, May 1 · 10:45 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: Main Stage
Type: keynote
Duration: 45m

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Coming Soon!

Speakers

Sergio Lerner

Fairgate

X GitHub Website

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talk

Panel: Battle of the Covenants

Rusty Russell, Brandon Black (reardencode), Rijndael, Junseth, Johan T. Halseth

Time: Wed, May 1 · 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 1h

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What is a covenant? What are the challenges around adding this functionality to bitcoin? Join a panel of experts led by the legendary Jusneth as we dig into defining the different proposals for covenant updates and the tradeoffs around each of them.

Speakers

Rusty Russell

Blockstream

X Nostr GitHub Website

Brandon Black (reardencode)

Ngu Services LLC

X Nostr GitHub

Rijndael

Taproot Wizards

X Nostr GitHub Website

Junseth

Bitcoin OG

X Nostr Website

Johan T. Halseth

Open Source @ NYDIG

X GitHub

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talk

Optimistic execution of RISC-V in Tapscript

Johan T. Halseth

Time: Wed, May 1 · 1:30 PM – 2:00 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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If it compiles, it can be verified in Bitcoin script. We'll show how a covenant addition to Bitcoin could power up Tapscript to enable verification of arbitrary computation, and other good stuff.

Speakers

Johan T. Halseth

Open Source @ NYDIG

X GitHub

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talk

Covenants with CAT

Rijndael

Time: Wed, May 1 · 2:00 PM – 2:45 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 45m

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Using only OP_CAT and BIP340/341 schnorr signatures, you can do a surprising amount of transaction introspection in bitcoin script. In this talk, we explore the mathematics and mechanics of the technique, and see some sample applications with code and a discussion of the tradeoffs and considerations.

Speakers

Rijndael

Taproot Wizards

X Nostr GitHub Website

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talk

sigops more like sigoops

niftynei

Time: Wed, May 1 · 2:45 PM – 3:30 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 45m

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Does Bitcoin have gas fees? No but there are limits to execution built-in to the scripting system. In this talk, we’ll get into how Bitcoin measures and rate-limits CPU usage of scripts by talking about the sigops limit!

Speakers

niftynei

bitcoin++

X Nostr GitHub Instagram Website

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talk

TXHASH, TL;DR for those not reading BIPs

Steven Roose

Time: Wed, May 1 · 4:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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A quick overview of the TXHASH covenant proposal"

Speakers

Steven Roose

Ark

X GitHub

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talk

Bolt12 Makes Bitcoin Digital Cash

Jeff Czyz

Time: Wed, May 1 · 4:30 PM – 5:15 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 45m

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Bitcoin aims to provide a decentralized, private, secure, and unstoppable currency. However, the Lightning Network has faced challenges in meeting these goals. We will explore how BOLT12 addresses these issues and the technical details that enable its functionality.

Speakers

Jeff Czyz

Spiral

X GitHub

workshop

Running the VLS on Embedded Hardware

Ken Sedgwick

Time: Wed, May 1 · 10:45 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: workshop
Duration: 45m

Ken Sedgwick will discuss the goals and challenges of running the Validating Lightning Signer (VLS) on embedded hardware devices.

Speakers

Ken Sedgwick

Validating Lightning Signer

X GitHub

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talk

Deep dive into BIP324

stratospher

Time: Wed, May 1 · 1:30 PM – 2:00 PM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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BIP324 is Bitcoin's new P2P transport protocol which features opportunistic encryption, a mild bandwidth reduction, and the ability to negotiate upgrades before exchanging application messages. We'll look into the intuition behind constructing the initial v2 handshake between nodes and encryption schemes used for constructing network messages.

Speakers

stratospher

Bitcoin Explorer

X Nostr GitHub

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talk

Docker Run VLS

Lakshya Singh

Time: Wed, May 1 · 2:00 PM – 2:45 PM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 45m

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Easily setting up a configurable lightning node in cloud or local system with VLS, CLBOSS, etc. by using docker containers. SETUP REQUIRED: We need to have a docker installation on the system. Reference can be taken from official docker documentation: https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/

Speakers

Lakshya Singh

Validating Lightning Signer

X GitHub

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talk

State of the Ark

Steven Roose

Time: Wed, May 1 · 2:45 PM – 3:30 PM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 45m

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Status update on development of the Ark layer-two protocol.

Speakers

Steven Roose

Ark

X GitHub

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talk

Replace by Fee-Rate

Peter Todd

Time: Wed, May 1 · 4:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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Transaction pinning is potential threat to many multi-party protocols such as lightning. Yet it's also an economic exploit: miners are leaving money on the table. Here we'll look at replace-by-fee-rate, an incentives-based solution to pinning that both fixes the problem, and earns miners more money.

Speakers

Peter Todd

OpenTimestamps

X Nostr GitHub Website

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talk

secp256k1-jdk, bitcoinj, and the Bitcoin JDK ecosystem

M Sean Gilligan

Time: Wed, May 1 · 4:30 PM – 5:15 PM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 45m

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We'll start with a look at the greater Bitcoin JDK ecosystem and a brief intro to modern (2024+), functional-style Java. We'll compare modern Java with Rust and look at how Rust libraries can be used in Java. We'll introduce the new secp256k1-jdk API and its implementation using libsecp256k1 and the Foreign Function & Memory API ("Panama"). We'll also look at the refactored bitcoinj 0.17 and beyond.

Speakers

M Sean Gilligan

bitcoinj

X GitHub

workshop

Chain-sync-athon

Micaiah Reid

Time: Wed, May 1 · 10:45 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: Workshops Stage
Type: workshop
Duration: 45m

Join Hiro’s engineers to get your node synced, so you’ll be ready for building a bitcoin indexer or building on a full node for the hackathon later in the week!

Speakers

Micaiah Reid

Hiro Systems

X GitHub Website

Doors9:00 AM

Breakfast9:30 AM

Lunch12:30 PM

Coffee3:30 PM

Time

Main Stage

Talks Stage

Workshops Stage

9AM

10AM

11AM

12PM

1PM

2PM

3PM

4PM

5PM

6PM

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talk

The Unscalability of Bitcoin

Benjamin Carman

Time: Thu, May 2 · 10:00 AM – 10:30 AM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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Bitcoin has lots of scalability problems, from payments to ownership, and so much more. We'll break down why bitcoin has troubles scaling and how we may or may not be able to fix it.

Speakers

Benjamin Carman

Spiral

X Nostr GitHub Website

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talk

LDK: Lightning Like You Mean It

Conor Okus

Time: Thu, May 2 · 10:30 AM – 11:00 AM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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The Lightning Development Kit (LDK) lets developers efficiently build Lightning applications. LDK is a comprehensive, open-source Lightning implementation used by dozens of projects including Lightspark, Mutiny, Cash App, and BitKit. Conor Okus will outline the SDK's capabilities, LDK Node, Lightning Network services compatible with LDK, and the current development roadmap.

Speakers

Conor Okus

Spiral

X Nostr GitHub

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talk

Validating Metaprotocols in Bitcoin Script w/ Covenants

Olaoluwa Osuntokun

Time: Thu, May 2 · 11:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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Metaprotocols built on Bitcoin such as the Taproot Assets Protocol define new rules for transactions containing specific committed metadata (eg: a new leaf in the tapscript tree). A sub-class of these protocols in the client-side validation paradigm rely on special nodes that validate these transaction with auxiliary information to overlay a new consensus system on top of Bitcoin. However as Bitcoin Script isn't aware of these meta protocols, it's possible to mine a transaction that is valid for Bitcoin consensus, but invalid from the PoV of a metaprotocol. In this talk, we'll explore how we can use covenants to incrementally make Bitcoin Script aware of these metaprotocols, which unlocks the door to new scaling solution and expressibility on Bitcoin.

Speakers

Olaoluwa Osuntokun

Lightning Labs

X GitHub

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talk

The State Of Bitcoin Web Development with BitScript

Jesus Najera

Time: Thu, May 2 · 11:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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Lessons Learned & Insights Gained On How We'll Finally Keep Developers Around

Speakers

Jesus Najera

BitScript

X GitHub

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talk

BitEscrow: Pioneering Non-Custodial Reversible Transactions

Tristan Bietsch

Time: Thu, May 2 · 12:00 PM – 12:30 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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Escrow: the everyday, unseen guardian of almost every transaction. Discover how BitEscrow elevates crucial security with innovative, non-custodial reversible transactions — powered by our APIs and SDKs — shaping the future of Bitcoin transactions.

Speakers

Tristan Bietsch

BitEscrow

X Nostr GitHub Website

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talk

Miniscript Deep Dive

Rob Hamilton

Time: Thu, May 2 · 1:30 PM – 2:00 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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Presentation about Miniscript Fragments, Types, and Properties

Speakers

Rob Hamilton

AnchorWatch

X Nostr GitHub

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talk

Miniscript for Developers

Randy Naar

Time: Thu, May 2 · 2:00 PM – 2:45 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 45m

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Diving into Miniscript doesn't have to be daunting. In this talk you'll learn the basics of the Miniscript language, the benefits of using it over traditional Bitcoin Script, and how you can use it in your own applications. I'll also share the challenges I encountered with existing Miniscript libraries and explain the motivation for developing my own.

Speakers

Randy Naar

Blockstream // Greenlight

X GitHub

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talk

(Mini)Scripting in covenant world

Sanket Kanjalkar

Time: Thu, May 2 · 2:45 PM – 3:30 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 45m

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We will discuss how complex scripting could look like with different covenant opcodes. Note: This is not an endorsement of any opcode proposal.

Speakers

Sanket Kanjalkar

Block

X GitHub

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talk

Panel: Tooling Script

Dusty Daemon, Jesus Najera, Rob Hamilton, Topher Scott

Time: Thu, May 2 · 4:00 PM – 4:45 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 45m

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The scripting landscape is quickly evolving, and along with it the tools for

Speakers

Dusty Daemon

core-lightning

X Nostr GitHub Website

Jesus Najera

BitScript

X GitHub

Rob Hamilton

AnchorWatch

X Nostr GitHub

Topher Scott

BitEscrow

X GitHub

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talk

sighash_noinput, a history

Christian Decker

Time: Thu, May 2 · 4:45 PM – 5:15 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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What is sighash_noinput? Where did it come from? How did it come to be known as APO? In this talk Blockstream’s Christian Decker will walk us through the the evolution of BIP118 over the years, giving us a good picture of where the proposal stands now.

Speakers

Christian Decker

Blockstream // Greenlight

X GitHub

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talk

CAT, Scripts and Lamport Sigs

Andrew Poelstra

Time: Thu, May 2 · 5:15 PM – 5:45 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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In 2021, Jeremy Rubin showed that it is possible to do 32-bit Lamport signatures in Bitcoin Script, without any changes to the network. This development, while independently interesting for some oracle applications, has really shown its value by its use in BitVM, an aggressively ambitious project by Robin Linus to do arbitrary computations in Script by splitting them across dozens of transactions indexing billion-entry Merkle trees. The core idea is that we can think of Lamport signatures as indexing a sort of "global key-value store" supporting single writes and erasures, where each entry has an owner. We discuss this idea, as well as how it generalizes using OP_CAT beyond 32-bit values to "real" signatures, commitments to Merkle trees, and more.

Speakers

Andrew Poelstra

Blockstream Research

X GitHub Website

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workshop

Treasure hunting mistakes on Bitcoin

Ramon Amela Milian

Time: Thu, May 2 · 10:00 AM – 10:30 AM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: workshop
Duration: 30m

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A hands-on introduction to the use of connectors and Winternitz signatures to locate errors in a chain of hashes. This mechanism allows for challenging arbitrary computations on Bitcoin using BitVMX, paving the way for a more decentralized connection with Rootstock.

Speakers

Ramon Amela Milian

Rootstock Labs

Website

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workshop

SV2 explained: a step towards mining decentralization

plebhash

Time: Thu, May 2 · 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: workshop
Duration: 1h

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An overview of SV2: history, why, what, how, and roadmap. Also some hands-on activity where the audience sets up pools and CPU miners.

Speakers

plebhash

Vinteum Grantee

X Nostr GitHub Website

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workshop

How to build a compact Bitcoin index

Micaiah Reid

Time: Thu, May 2 · 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: workshop
Duration: 1h

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One of the biggest pain points we see from developers building on Bitcoin is indexing the chain. Many devs have to maintain their own index of blockchain chainstate, which can incur high storage costs and be challenging to keep up to date. Re-orgs of chainstate happen often, and every time there’s a re-org, you have to re-index the entire chain, which can be a time-intensive process. At Hiro, we built an open source indexing engine (Chainhook) that enables anyone to build consistent, reorg-proof databases that index only the information you want— creating a lighter-weight index. In this workshop, we'll show you how to create individual "chainhooks" to filter and trigger specific actions based on on-chain events.

Speakers

Micaiah Reid

Hiro Systems

X GitHub Website

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talk

Banking on Ark

Time: Thu, May 2 · 1:30 PM – 2:00 PM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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Ark brings Bitcoin lending to reality: why would I borrow Bitcoin?

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talk

Splice Is Nice(r) with Splice Script!

Dusty Daemon

Time: Thu, May 2 · 2:00 PM – 2:45 PM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 45m

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A talk about the latest “scripting” language coming to Core Lightning to help make complex splices a reality for lightning!

Speakers

Dusty Daemon

core-lightning

X Nostr GitHub Website

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talk

Quirky Covenants

Brandon Black (reardencode)

Time: Thu, May 2 · 2:45 PM – 3:30 PM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 45m

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A forward and backward look at the ways various covenant proposals overlap, interact, and sometimes do surprising things. We'll touch on SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT (BIP118), OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (BIP119), OP_CHECKSIGFROMSTACK(VERIFY), OP_VAULT(RECOVER) (BIP345), OP_CHECKCONTRACTVERIFY, and OP_CAT. Did you know that OP_VAULT is recursive? Did you know that OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY+OP_CHECKSIGFROMSTACK has many of the same benefits as SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT and then some bonuses? Can OP_CAT alone enable Lightning Symmetry channels? These questions and more will be answered as we explore quirky covenants.

Speakers

Brandon Black (reardencode)

Ngu Services LLC

X Nostr GitHub

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workshop

Simphony: High-level Simplicity

Christian Lewe

Time: Thu, May 2 · 4:00 PM – 4:45 PM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: workshop
Duration: 45m

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Simplicity is the future of Bitcoin smart contracts. The language brings arbitrary computation without loops and formal correctness to the blockchain. However, Simplicity is hard to write, like Assembly. Simphony is a high-level language, like Rust, that compiles to Simplicity. In my talk, I will introduce you to Simphony and to the web IDE that runs Simphony in the browser. Start Simplicity development today on your phone!

Speakers

Christian Lewe

Blockstream Research

X GitHub

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talk

Ice, Ice, Maybe? OPVAULT and reactive security for your cold storage

Kody Low

Time: Thu, May 2 · 4:45 PM – 5:15 PM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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Locking your coins up into a vault is one proposal for updating script (OP_VAULT). How does this work and why should you ice your coins with vaults?

Speakers

Kody Low

Fedi

X Nostr GitHub Website

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talk

OP_EXPIRE

Peter Todd

Time: Thu, May 2 · 5:15 PM – 5:45 PM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: talk
Duration: 30m

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Why it can be useful to make outputs impossible to spend after a deadline, and how we can make this reasonably reorg safe.

Speakers

Peter Todd

OpenTimestamps

X Nostr GitHub Website

Doors9:00 AM

Breakfast9:30 AM

Lunch12:30 PM

Coffee3:30 PM

Time

Main Stage

Talks Stage

Workshops Stage

9AM

10AM

11AM

12PM

1PM

2PM

3PM

4PM

5PM

6PM

Watch

workshop

Coinjoin & Bitcoin Script

Super Testnet

Time: Fri, May 3 · 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: Main Stage
Type: workshop
Duration: 1h

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Write coinjoin software and learn the scripts that help you do it

Speakers

Super Testnet

Independent

X Nostr GitHub

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workshop

sMATT contracts, zero to hero

Salvatore Ingala

Time: Fri, May 3 · 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: workshop
Duration: 1h

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How to go from idea to Bitcoin smart contracts using OP_CHECKCONTRACTVERIFY

Speakers

Salvatore Ingala

Ledger

X Nostr GitHub

hackathon

Hackathon

Time: Fri, May 3 · 4:00 PM – 6:30 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: hackathon
Duration: 2h 30m

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workshop

FROSTy Brews: Protocol Augmentations

Jesse Posner

Time: Fri, May 3 · 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Location: Talks Stage
Type: workshop
Duration: 2h

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A guided tour through a series of protocols that are compatible with FROST: proactive secret sharing, Taproot and BIP32 key tweaking, participant enrollment/disenrollment, share repairability, MuSig2 nesting, and adaptor signatures.

Speakers

Jesse Posner

Bitkey

X Nostr GitHub

Doors9:30 AM

Breakfast9:30 AM

Lunch12:30 PM

Coffee4:00 PM

Time

Main Stage

Talks Stage

Workshops Stage

10AM

11AM

12PM

1PM

2PM

3PM

4PM

5PM

Watch

hackathon

Presentations

Justin Moon, Buck Perley, Benjamin Carman

Time: Sat, May 4 · 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: hackathon
Duration: 1h

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Speakers

Justin Moon

Fedi

X Nostr GitHub Website

Buck Perley

FromA2B

X Nostr GitHub Website

Benjamin Carman

Spiral

X Nostr GitHub Website

hackathon

Hackathon Awards

Coinicarus, Walton, Dusty Daemon, Super Testnet

Time: Sat, May 4 · 4:30 PM – 5:00 PM
Location: Main Stage
Type: hackathon
Duration: 30m

Speakers

Coinicarus

Pleb Underground

X Nostr Website

Walton

bitcoin++

X Website

Dusty Daemon

core-lightning

X Nostr GitHub Website

Super Testnet

Independent

X Nostr GitHub