Good Morning, Bitcoin - Monday, September 23rd, 2024

GM. Miners are keep on hashing, developers are keep on developing, and nothing is basically risk-free. Here's your daily update on some of the most interesting things happening in Bitcoin and freedom tech.

What's happening

• Tor Project responds to reports of German Police deanonymizing users. The project issued a response to a recent investigative news story looking into the de-anonymization of an Onion Service used by a Tor user. The user was utilizing an old version of the long-retired application Ricochet, and the deanonymization occurred through a targeted law-enforcement attack between 2019 and 2021. "For the great majority of users worldwide that need to protect their privacy while browsing the Internet, Tor is still the best solution for them," said the developers.

• Hut8 and Bitmain to launch of next-gen ASIC miner U3S21EXPH. According to the firm, U3S21EXPH can reach up to 860 TH/s with an efficiency of 13 J/TH. This model is the result of a partnership between Hut 8 and Bitmain, where Hut 8 supported both technical and commercial development.

"Hut 8 plans to deploy the model in Q2 2025 through a ~15 EH/s hosting deployment with potential transition to self-mining through purchase option," was stated in the announcement.

• OpenSats announced seventh wave of Nostr grants. The five projects of this funding wave are Nostr Arduino, White Noise, futr, Notedeck, and Keystache.
• Disclosure of memory DoS due to headers spam in Bitcoin Core v24.0.0 and older. Before Bitcoin Core v24.0.1, attackers could spam nodes with low-difficulty headers chains, which could be used to remotely crash peers. By February 2022, attack costs dropped to 14.73% of mining a block; by September 2024, it would be just 4.44% (1.07 BTC and 0.14 BTC, respectively). This issue is considered high severity, and users should upgrade their nodes.

"A protection against this DoS was implemented in Bitcoin Core PR #25717, whereby the node will first verify a presented chain has enough work before committing to store it. With that, Bitcoin Core no longer relies on having checkpoints to protect against any known attacks," states the advisory page.

• First Ark transactions on the mainnet. Second, a company dedicated to scaling bitcoin through Ark and related second-layer technologies, demonstrated some of the first Ark transactions on the Bitcoin mainnet. You can find a full recap with links and other resources here.

• Operation Final Exchange. German police seized 47 'unregulated' cryptocurrency exchange services hosted in the country. Authorities said they obtained extensive user and transaction data from the platforms, which are expected to aid in future investigations. No arrests have been reported yet, according to Bleeping Computer.
• The German Interior Ministry dodges questions on government use of chain surveillance software. In August, German party Die Linke questioned the government's use of blockchain analysis software and the risks of cryptocurrency mixers in criminal activity. The Interior Ministry avoided answering these questions, reports The Rage.

• $243M heist targeting Genesis creditor. On August 19, a creditor of the now-bankrupt trading firm Genesis was deceived by a complex social engineering scam involving a fake Google support number, resulting in the loss of more than 4,100 BTC. The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Thursday that the investigation into the theft has resulted in two arrests.
• MicroStrategy gets additional 7,420 bitcoin. The latest purchase cost $489 million, bringing the company's total BTC holdings to 252,220 coins.
• SEC approves option trading on Blackrock's spot bitcoin ETF. The approved options on the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) will be physically settled, meaning Bitcoin will be delivered upon exercise of the option, reports BTC Times.
• Btrust Developer Day will take place on December 8, 2024, at the JW Marriott Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. The event is free and open to all. Register here to attend. The 2024 Africa Bitcoin Conference is set to take place from December 9 to 11th.

Use the tools

• Wasabi Wallet v2.2.0 comes with new features such as Taproot receive addresses, faster transaction broadcasting, improved CPFP fee estimation, assistance with coordinator setup, the ability to use a pruned node in the backend, among other enhancements.
  • A significant change in this release is the discontinuation of paying fees to CoinJoin coordinators to avoid unknown incentives and limit user risk. Only fee-free coordinators are now supported.

• ASHIGARU v1.0.0 is a self-custodial, open-source and secure mobile Bitcoin wallet that is private by design. It has been forked and build upon Samourai Wallet Source Code, including all commits from Samourai Wallet's /master and /development branches up to 24th April 2024. Available on Android.
• Joinstr mobile app v0.1.0 pre-release is now available for testing. Download the Android APK here.
• Core Lightning v24.08.1 is a hotfix release that addresses several crash issues and other bugs.
• ESP-miner v2.2.2 is out, featuring a critical bug fix for Gamma machines, among other improvements and optimizations.
• kibo v0.4.0, a rebrand of Satonomics, is a free and open-source, Bitcoin-only, self-hostable alternative to Glassnode. Check it out at kibo.money and support the project here.
• Nostr client Coracle is now available on Android. Get the APK here.
• Primal iOS v1.9.90 resolves performance and connectivity issues reported by users.
  • "There are no new features in this release. We are preparing a massive upgrade with Primal 2.0 in October," said miljan.
• Yuki Kishimoto has released rust-nostr v0.35, which introduces support for the gossip model and negentropy v1, adds 'MockRelay' for local relay tests, enables usage of the embedded Tor client on mobile devices, and more.
• WoT Relay v0.1.12 adds the ability to disable archiving reactions, prune old notes, and includes various fixes and performance optimizations.
• Relay Wizard v0.2.0, a tool to install and manage Nostr relays, now lets you choose between multiple Nostr relay implementations, including a NIP-29 relay that supports groups.

• Hashrate Index v3.0 is the latest iteration of Hashrate Index Data dashboard. It comes with easier navigation, improved chart features, better shareability, and more streamlined REST API integration.
• LuxOS Commander v0.16.0 now allows users to configure their machines while installing LuxOS, and includes a new CSV import/export feature.
• stacker.news has implemented boost changes, increased the fee reward of territory founders to 70% (up from 50%) and raised the sybil fee on zaps to 30% (up from 10%).
• GrapheneOS v2024091900 is here.

"We need more people to use the Beta channel and quickly report regressions in the new releases before they reach Stable. If you're using the Alpha or Beta channels, please join the testing chat room on either Matrix, Discord or Telegram and report regressions in new releases," said the project maintainers.

• Swiss Bitcoin Pay App v2.1.4 has been released with several fixes and improvements.
• DASHU is developing Nowser, a new Nostr signing app for iOS and Android.
• fiatjaf has made a simple CLI client for Blossom. Get it here.
• IVPN Desktop v3.14.17 and iOS v2.12.4 now hide the user's account ID in the app by default.
• OpenSSH v9.9 was released on September 19 with a number of new features and bug fixes.
• AirBTC, a bitcoin-based alternative to AirBNB, is now offering nostr identity verification as an alternative to traditional KYC. The project may implement Nostr-based login soon as well.

Other stuff

• Bitcoin Nakawa, a small village in Zambia, is seeking funds to support the operation of its school.
• Reason published an article and a video about countering social media censorship using Nostr.
• Jonas Nick, Liam Eagen and Robin Linus co-authored a paper titled "Shielded CSV: Private and Efficient Client-Side Validation." Check it out here.

• What did we miss? DM us on Nostr.
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