Good Morning, Bitcoin - Monday, September 30th, 2024

What's happening

• OpenSats issues second wave of Education Grants. The latest grantees include Bitcoin Jungle, Bitcoin Indonesia, Deciphering Bitcoin, BOBSpaces Residency - Cohort 3, Satsie's Pocket Guides, and Africa Free Routing.
  • If you are an educator, developer, or advocate working on a project aligned with OpenSats mission, apply for funding here.
• Bitcoin Majlis Educational Grant to Muslim scholars and students. This grant offers a chance to explore Bitcoin and Islamic principles. Successfully completing an essay can earn you a reward of at least 0.01 BTC. Today is the last day to apply for this program.
• Julian Assange to attend PACE hearing in Strasbourg tomorrow. The hearing is set to investigate his conviction and its chilling effect on human rights. It will be open to the press and live-streamed in English from 8:30 AM to 10 AM CEST.

• CZ is out of jail. Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao was released from custody last Friday after spending four months in a California prison. "Let me chill for a bit. Then figure out the next steps. There are always more opportunities in the future than there were in the past," he said on X.

• Tether aids US Department of Justice in seizing over $6M. The funds were linked to a "crypto-confidence scheme based in Southeast Asia." In the past year, Tether helped U.S. law enforcement seize nearly $15 million in USDT from various fraud operations, including pig butchering schemes and a tech support scam network.
• Check Point Research (CPR) case study on 'crypto drainer tactics.' Researchers uncovered a malicious app on Google Play that used evasion techniques to avoid detection. The app ranked high in search results for nearly five months before being removed, allowing hackers to steal approximately $70,000 in cryptocurrency from victims. Read more about it here.
• New York town of Massena passes mining regulations. The regulations ban seabed containers for bitcoin mining, mandate operations in industrial zones, and enforce noise standards, reports The Miner Mag.
• Block expands Mining Development Kit (MDK) Beta. New participants in the program include SmithOffGrid, Wilson Mining, and Freerk.

"[Testers] felt the setup instructions were very clear and appreciated the firmware’s simplicity and clean look. We got a lot of helpful feedback on ways to improve the KPIs reported in the firmware’s dashboard, as well as the need for better API access, log access, and error notifications coupled with resolution procedures. Additionally, we were able to identify valuable learnings from a chip overheating on the hashboard which was traced to issues with the thermal interface material (TIM) application at the factory," said the company.

Use the tools

• ARK v0.3 update introduces several security, efficiency, and functionality improvements, including VTXO Tree Signing and a simplified onboarding process.
• DATUM by OCEAN private beta launched. DATUM (Decentralized Alternative Templates for Universal Mining) is a new decentralized mining protocol designed to empower miners with control over block template construction.
  • Interested parties can contact OCEAN for information about joining the exclusive beta or check back on October 18 for details about the upcoming public beta release.
• Bitcoin Knots v27.1 package for startOS is here. It brings DATUM compatibility for OCEAN Pool miners.
• Live Wallet v0.9.0 is now available on Linux Redhat distributions and Windows. Previously available on Linux and macOS, Live Wallet is a desktop tool to help estimate the effect of bitcoin transaction fees on individual UTXOs and transactions containing multiple UTXOs.

• electrs v0.10.6 packages updated dependencies, several bug fixes and optimizations.
• Cake Wallet v0.4.20 is now available for testing. It comes with Wallet Seed Groups, Silent Payments enhancements, new swap providers, and more. Join here.
• GDK v0.73.1 pre-release is out with a new call to create transactions that re-deposit wallet funds and updated Libwally dependency.
• Amethyst v0.92.1, a free and open source Nostr client for Android, comes with a default Tor service for .onion URLs and untrusted relays access from the Outbox model. It also brings NFC-hosted transient accounts, which log off and delete traces when the app backgrounds, among other things.
• Lume v4.2.0, a multi-purpose nostr client for Windows and macOS, introduces Gossip model support, adds client tags, web of trust filter (disabled by default), improves post editor, and enables proof-of-work mechanism by default.
• nostrudel.ninja v0.41.0 adds option to wipe wasm relay database, brings support for showing embedded HLS videos, supports pinning articles, adds relay discovery map, and more.
• NostrSMS.com is a fun project that allows users to make Nostr posts by sending SMS messages.
• lnrecc v1.0.1 is a a tool for streamlining recurring Lightning payments, such as subscriptions or weekly pocket money for kids.
• Pollerama is a nostr-based polls client for anonymous poll creation and responses, with spam reduction using contact lists and proof-of-work requirement.
• algia v0.0.83, a Nostr CLI client written in Go, has been released.
• gitworkshop.dev is a web client for collaborating on issues and code proposals for git repositories via Nostr.
• GrapheneOS v2024092900 has been released.

Other stuff

• ottosch published a quick thread comparing the code of Samourai and Ashigaru wallets.
• final shared an insightful article about the purpose, strategy and motivation behind building GrapheneOS.
• Robosats community is moving away from Telegram. Find out where here.

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