Bitcoin Explained - The Technical Side of Bitcoin

Compact Blocks - Episode 51

Dec 31, 2021

Hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost are back from their travel break for a brand new episode of Bitcoin, Explained! In this episode, they explain how Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer network is made more efficient and fast with Compact Blocks.

Compact blocks are — as the name suggests — compact versions of Bitcoin...

Death To The Mempool, Long Live The Mempool - Episode 50

Nov 27, 2021

In this episode of Bitcoin, Explained, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss a recent thread on the Bitcoin development mailing list, titled “Death to the Mempool, Long Live the Mempool”.

In the thread, Blockstream engineer Lisa “niftynei” Neigut proposes to get rid of the memory pool (mempool):...

The Fake Peers Attack! - Episode 49

Nov 12, 2021

Bitcoin was under attack! It’s the story the mainstream media won’t tell you!

Hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost finally met in Utrecht again to record Bitcoin, Explained. In this episode, they discuss a recent attack on the Bitcoin network, where some nodes were flooding peers with fake IP-addresses.

As...

Lightning Network Upgrades (Eltoo + SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT) with Christian Decker - Episode 48

Oct 29, 2021

In this episode of “Bitcoin Explained,” host Sjors Provoost and guest Christian Decker discussed SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT, a proposed new sighash flag that would enable a cleaner version of the Lightning Network and other Layer 2 protocols.

Sighash flags are included in Bitcoin transactions to indicate which part of the...

Lightning Network Channel Payments with Rene Pickhardt - Episode 47

Oct 15, 2021

In this episode of Bitcoin Explained, (formerly known as The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado) host Sjors Provoost is joined by Rene Pickhardt to discuss Rene’s paper “Optimally Reliable & Cheap Payment Flows on the Lightning Network”. Rene has spent the last two years researching the reliability of the lightning network,...