Crypto Insights
Rethinking Bitcoin Scaling: Miners Take the Lead, Skipping Lightning Complexity
To address limitations of the Lightning Network—such as reliance on watchtowers and routing complexity caused by channel liquidity constraints—developer Jakob Widmann proposed a new “Anticipation Pool” (AP) solution for scaling Bitcoin. This approach leverages mining infrastructure to bypass the complexities of Lightning channels.
The scheme uses pre-signed Bitcoin transactions (Anticipation tx, ATX) that go into a miner-managed pool, enabling off-chain fast transfers while ensuring final on-chain settlement. Unlike payment channels, the Anticipation Pool benefits from miners being online 24/7, eliminating the need for watchtowers. A simple forward or split mechanism resolves multi-round interaction complexity. Each transaction has a time lock: during this period, only the recipient can either publish it on-chain or forward it to others. Each forward increases fees, incentivizing miners to maintain the pool and ensuring that transactions ultimately settle on-chain.
Widmann now seeks feedback from the Bitcoin community on technical feasibility, signature and verification mechanisms, potential protocol upgrade requirements, attack vectors, economic incentive design, and optimal parameter settings.
A Decade of ECDSA Optimization: From OpenSSL to libsecp256k1
Developer Sebastian Falbesoner shared a performance comparison study on ECDSA signature verification. He reviewed the ten-year anniversary of Bitcoin Core’s switch from OpenSSL to libsecp256k1 and speculated on how performance might have evolved if the switch had not occurred.
The study showed that at the time of the switch, libsecp256k1 outperformed OpenSSL by 2.5× to 5.5×. To test performance over the past decade, he followed three steps: parsing compressed public keys → parsing DER-encoded signatures → verifying ECDSA signatures, running benchmarks on pseudo-random key pairs across three different machines. Results indicate that libsecp256k1 has continued to improve: about a 28% gain from bc-0.19 to bc-0.20, and another 30% from bc-0.20 to bc-22.0, whereas OpenSSL’s performance remained mostly unchanged.
The conclusion highlights that outside the Bitcoin ecosystem, interest in the secp256k1 curve is limited, meaning that performance optimizations require significant dedicated work to produce noticeable benefits. Falbesoner encourages the community to reproduce the experiments and provide feedback if they identify methodological or data discrepancies. Source code is available on GitHub.
Evaluating Post-Quantum Blockchain Algorithms
With the accelerating development of quantum computing, traditional cryptographic algorithms face potential risks. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) officially standardized multiple post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms in 2024. Blockchain systems, heavily reliant on cryptography—particularly ECDSA used in Bitcoin, Ethereum, among many others—still have largely unexplored computational overhead for PQC implementations.
Recently, a research team proposed a framework for evaluating PQC in blockchain environments. They assessed various PQC signature algorithms, including ML-DSA, Dilithium, Falcon, Mayo, SLH-DSA, SPHINCS+, and Cross, against ECDSA on a 1–5 security level scale. Results show that at security level 1, PQC overhead is generally low, and at higher security levels, some algorithms even outperform ECDSA. For example, ML-DSA on an ARM-based laptop achieves a 0.14 ms verification time at security level 5, significantly faster than ECDSA’s 0.88 ms.
Details: Assessing the Impact of Post-Quantum Digital Signature Algorithms on Blockchains
Trustless Cross-Chain Lightning Channels: Fast, Multi-Asset, No Middlemen
The study first notes that while payment channels are widely used in single-chain environments like the Lightning Network, current mechanisms have multiple limitations:
No cross-chain: they are unable to quickly exchange assets across chains
Non-optimal round complexity: off-chain updates require more than two rounds
No bitcoin compatibility: they require more advanced scripting, preventing deployment on simple-script blockchains
The team proposes a new payment channel protocol overcoming the above limitations. It supports bidirectional, multi-asset, multi-chain off-chain interactions, with each update requiring only one message per party. The protocol is fully compatible with Bitcoin and can operate on blockchains supporting only basic scripts, suitable for real multi-chain networks. Crucially, it achieves cross-chain atomic settlement without trusted intermediaries.
The study also provides a security proof and a formal definition for the cross-chain payment channel. Experiments show that in a two-party setup exchanging assets across three chains multiple times, the channel incurs minimal cost.
Details: Cross-chain Lightning Trades: Getting the Advantages of a Custodial Exchange while Keeping Your Assets
Simpler, Lightning-Compatible Payment Channels with One-Time Signatures
This research introduces a new bidirectional payment channel using state sequence-based one-time signatures (OTS). The design is simpler than the Poon-Dryja structure and offers several advantages: O(1) storage per channel, minimal information leakage, and compatibility with Lightning Network routing.
Details: OTS-PC: OTS-based Payment Channels for the Lightning Network
Starknet Advances on Reed–Solomon Proximity Gaps
Reed–Solomon (RS) error-correcting codes play a key role in cryptography. A critical concept is the proximity gaps: for a set of codewords, either all elements are δ-close to a certain property in relative Hamming distance, or only very few are—a roughly 50/50 split never occurs.
StarkWare recently made progress on this problem. For RS codes with constant relative distance δ∈(0,1), they derived improved forward and reverse results. This advances coding theory and reduces the security error and overhead of STARK-based blockchain proofs, enabling faster, more secure, and transparent zero-knowledge applications.
Details: On Proximity Gaps for Reed–Solomon Codes
Offline Single-Sided Spilman Channels Arrive in Cashu Protocol
Cashu developers proposed a new NUT_XX specification for creating offline single-sided Spilman channels. This allows Alice and Bob to open a channel under any mint supporting NUT-11: Pay to Public Key (P2PK). Once opened, Alice can reduce her balance and increase Bob’s. Bob can verify updates without contacting the mint each time.
This design supports billions of updates with tiny amounts, using only a small number of proofs, reducing bandwidth and mint load.
Starknet Q3 Update: Bitcoin Bridge, v0.14, and Ecosystem Highlights
In its Q3 2025 review, Starknet highlighted Bitcoin staking, Starknet v0.14.0 (Grinta) with a decentralized sequencer architecture, and progress on BitVM-driven bridges with Alpen Labs.
Citrea’s Last Testnet Fork Tangelo: Final Prep Before Mainnet
Citrea released its last testnet fork before mainnet. The upgrade included audits of rollup infrastructure and its BitVM-based bridge Clementine.
Hard Forks, Hard Questions: Bitcoin’s Microstructure Effects on Returns, Volume, and Volatility
This study analyzed 52 Bitcoin hard fork events between 2017 and 2018, using minute-level local projection methods to assess the impact on returns, trading volume, and volatility. Results show trading volume spikes immediately after forks, while returns and volatility are largely unaffected, suggesting governance splits trigger short-term activity without immediate price or volatility impact. This conclusion remains robust even after excluding major fork events, providing empirical guidance for future protocol debates (e.g., quantum resistance, energy efficiency).
Details: Hard forks, hard questions: Unraveling the microstructure effects on Bitcoin’s return, volume, and volatility
