Abstract: In this piece, BitMEX grantee Calvin Kim explains why the order in which blocks are validated does not matter under Utreexo. This is because the disk space savings make UTXO snapshots practical, which in turn allows for the parallelisation of the validation of the Bitcoin Blockchain. Calvin goes on to explain that one can...Read More
Abstract: In this piece, 100x Group grantee Calvin Kim announces the success in speeding up Bitcoin’s Initial Block Download (IBD) using the Utreexo client. While the speed improvement can vary depending on one’s local hardware and bottlenecks, the initial download and verification can be up to 62% faster compared to Bitcoin Core. Since many optimisations...Read More
Chapter 9 of the book The Blocksize War is published below. The full book is available on Amazon. As a reminder, 50% of any profits from physical book sales will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières, a charity that provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. The Blocksize...Read More
Abstract: We evaluate the theory behind the new Ethereum transaction fee mechanism, EIP-1559. Under the new model there are two elements to the transaction fee, a base fee which is burned, and a tip, which is allocated to block producers. The base fee is determined by the allocation of scarce block space to users, while...Read More
Chapter 8 of the book The Blocksize War is published below. The full book is available on Amazon. As a reminder, 50% of any profits from physical book sales will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières, a charity that provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. The Blocksize...Read More
Chapter 7 of the book The Blocksize War is published below. The full book is available on Amazon. As a reminder, 50% of any profits from physical book sales will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières, a charity that provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. The Blocksize...Read More
Chapter 6 of the book The Blocksize War is published below. The full book is available on Amazon. As a reminder, 50% of any profits from physical book sales will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières, a charity that provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. The Blocksize...Read More
Chapter 5 of the book The Blocksize War is published below. The full book is available on Amazon. As a reminder, 50% of any profits from physical book sales will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières, a charity that provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. The Blocksize...Read More
Chapter 4 of the book The Blocksize War is published below. The full book is available on Amazon. As a reminder, 50% of any profits from physical book sales will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières, a charity that provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. The Blocksize...Read More
Chapter 3 of the book The Blocksize War is published below. The full book is available on Amazon. As a reminder, 50% of any profits from physical book sales will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières, a charity that provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. The Blocksize...Read More
Chapter 2 of the book The Blocksize War is published below. The full book is available on Amazon. As a reminder, 50% of any profits from physical book sales will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières, a charity that provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. The Blocksize...Read More
Chapter 1 of the book The Blocksize War is published below. The full book is available on Amazon. As a reminder, 50% of any profits from physical book sales will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières, a charity that provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. The Blocksize...Read More
We are delighted to announce the publication of a new book by BitMEX Research. The book covers the major twists and turns of Bitcoin’s blocksize war, which raged on inside the Bitcoin space for over two years, from mid 2015 to late 2017. The book is available on Amazon now. Book Synopsis The book covers...Read More
Abstract: In this piece 100x Group grantee Jeremy Rubin describes a smart contract that can be used to verifiably commit to losing coins if Taproot does not activate by a certain date. Jeremy explains a novel and interesting methodology of using smart contracts on Bitcoin, in order to conduct these “bets”. However, in our view,...Read More
Key Market Insights Spot and Derivatives Volumes Double to All-Time Monthly Highs – New Daily Volume Records Set on the 11th of Jan. Derivatives volumes increased 101% in January to an all-time monthly high of $2.89tn. Meanwhile, total spot volumes increased by 97% to $2.34tn. Across January, volume from the 15 largest Top-Tier exchanges increased...Read More
Abstract: In this piece, 100x Group grantee Calvin Kim explores several claims about the benefits of Utreexo and the extent these advantages have been realised. Calvin explains the significant progress which has been made in the latest implementation of Utreexo, however there is plenty of additional work to do before ordinary users will be using...Read More
Abstract In this report we discuss a new proposed mining pool, expected to censor certain transactions. This may result in a detectable diversion from the typical revenue maximisation transaction selection policy, which forms the basis of our analysis. Using the Bitcoin Core command “getblocktemplate”, we generated Bitcoin candidate blocks without doing any hashing, conducting this...Read More
Abstract: In this nostalgic look back into Bitcoin’s history, we go back over eight years, to the London Bitcoin Conference of 2012. This report summarises the talks of the main speakers and tries to capture the radical anti-establishment political viewpoint which was dominant in the Bitcoin community at the time. We also describe some early...Read More
Abstract: In this piece we look at the exchange-traded bitcoin products on offer in the market. Grayscale is the current clear leader, with over 550,000 bitcoin under management in its Bitcoin trust. We examine various issues with the Grayscale product, including the lack of redeemability and the fact that it trades at a large premium...Read More
Abstract: In this post, 100x Group grantee Gleb Naumenko and Antoine Riard explore a different approach to channel jamming mitigation. They are suggesting using UTXO ownership proofs (a.k.a. Stake Certificates) to solve the channel jamming problem. Previously, these proofs were only used in the Lightning Network at channel announcement time to prevent malicious actors from...Read More
Abstract: In this report we examine merge mining on the Bitcoin blockchain. In the last year or so, on average each Bitcoin block mined contains around two commitment hashes from other blockchains somewhere in the coinbase transaction, indicating that most miners are conducting multiple forms of merge mining. Currently over 90% of the Bitcoin hashrate...Read More
Abstract: In this short piece, 100x Group grantee Calvin Kim provides a quick update on the development of the Utreexo implementation. Calvin is now looking forward to focusing on performance, integration with existing Bitcoin implementations, and adding robust tests to the codebase. Last year, when my first PR was merged, the Utreexo project was just...Read More
Abstract: This report examines the concept of brainwallets and in which contexts they may be useful. As an experiment eight Bitcoin private keys were created, using passphrases from popular works of fiction and other media. All the funds were swept away in a short amount of time and in one case, remarkably, the funds were...Read More
Abstract: We examine the short seven year history of decentralised exchanges (dexes), including the first significant iteration of the technology, Counterparty. We consider why these early attempts failed and how they evolved into the Uniswap protocol we have today, with its clever mechanism for inducing and managing liquidity. We explore Uniswap, its copycats and how...Read More
Abstract: We have installed the Blockstream Bitcoin Satellite system, a way to download and verify Bitcoin’s blockchain via satellite, without the need for an internet connection. We were able to set up the system reasonably quickly and the satellite connection does indeed have enough bandwidth to keep the node at Bitcoin’s tip, most of the...Read More
Crypto Spot Volumes Soar, with Top Tier Exchanges Dominating In August, Top-Tier volumes increased 58.3% to $529bn while Lower-Tier volumes increased 30.2% to $291bn. Top-Tier exchanges now represent 64% of total volume (vs 60% in July). Binance (Grade A) was the largest Top-Tier exchange by volume in August, trading $124.9bn (up 83%). This was followed...Read More
Abstract: We provide a follow up to our previous piece, a comparison between the Antminer S19 Pro and the Whatsminer M30S+. We focus on the thermal characteristics of the miners and provide thermal images. The thermal images indicate more clearly that the Whatsminer has a higher operating temperature than the Antminer, while both devices have...Read More
Abstract: We compare and measure various performance metrics for two of the latest and most energy efficient Bitcoin mining products, MicroBT’s Whatsminer M30S+ and Bitmain’s Antminer S19 Pro. Obviously the more expensive 7nm Bitmain product is more powerful, however the miners are pretty similar in terms of output. Our data over a short three day...Read More
Top-Tier Exchange Volumes Surge, Gaining Market Share In July, Top-Tier volumes increased 42.1% to $334bn while Lower-Tier volumes decreased 38.1% to $224bn. Top-Tier exchanges now represent 60% of total spot volume. Deribit Options Volumes Set New Record, Tripling Previous High Deribit’s options volumes have set a new all-time daily high in July, dwarfing the previous record by...Read More
Abstract: Bitcoin’s Taproot softfork upgrade looks almost ready and the Bitcoin community has started to seriously discuss the potential activation methodologies. In this piece, we summarise the main choices when it comes to the activation and discuss the most significant points of contention. We conclude by postulating that there is no perfect activating methodology. Any...Read More
