Mining Revenue Smoothing and Miner Behavior
Revenue smoothing products transfer difficulty risk from miners to counterparty desks, reshaping hashrate dynamics and who stays online through tough epochs.
№ 086BitcoinBitcoin's Unspendable Outputs and the Shrinking Float
Millions of BTC are locked in addresses no one controls. The supply effect is real; the estimates are murkier than most analysts admit.
№ 087BitcoinBitcoin Proof-of-Work: Why Blocks Cost Real Energy
Bitcoin's Hashcash mechanism forces miners to burn electricity to produce valid blocks. The energy expenditure is the security model, not a design flaw.
№ 088SecurityMerkle Mountain Ranges: Proof of Inclusion Explained
MMRs let blockchains prove data inclusion against a growing history without invalidating old proofs. The mechanic, the math, and the tradeoffs.
№ 089AnalysisEconomic Attacks: Proof-of-Stake vs Proof-of-Work
Attack costs in PoS and PoW differ mechanically, not just in scale. A precise breakdown of what attackers spend, risk, and lose in each model.
№ 090BitcoinBitcoin Node Security: Outbound vs Inbound Connections
Bitcoin Core trusts outbound connections more than inbound, and for precise reasons. The security logic behind that asymmetry, explained for node operators.
№ 091BitcoinBitcoin's Script Version Byte and Soft Fork Upgrades
Bitcoin's one-byte witness version field lets soft forks add new spending rules without invalidating old wallets or splitting the chain.
№ 092BitcoinBitcoin Full Node Economics: A Ten-Year Breakdown
Hardware, bandwidth, and opportunity costs all shape whether running a full Bitcoin node makes financial sense. The arithmetic, read straight.
№ 093BitcoinBitcoin Coin Selection: Fees, UTXOs, and Wallet Algorithms
Coin selection algorithms quietly determine your transaction fees and UTXO bloat. This piece breaks down Branch and Bound, dust, and consolidation strategy.
№ 094BitcoinBitcoin Timelocked Multisig for Inheritance Planning
Timelocked multisig scripts can serve as a Bitcoin dead-man's switch. Here are the mechanics, the design tradeoffs, and the failure modes.
№ 095BitcoinBitcoin Compact Filters: Private Light Client Sync
BIP 157/158 compact filters let Bitcoin light clients verify transactions locally without exposing addresses to any full node. The mechanism, plainly explained.
№ 096BitcoinBitcoin Anti-Fee-Sniping: Mechanism and Miner Incentives
Anti-fee-sniping uses nLocktime to make block reorgs unprofitable. Learn the exact mechanism, the privacy tradeoff, and why it matters more each halving.