Good morning,
Lately, there’s been a lot of overlap between what’s happening in Bitcoin and Ethereum development—and today’s issue is another example of that crossover.
I’m looking at Citrea’s recent mainnet deployment, a new Bitcoin Layer-2 that will likely feel familiar to anyone who has followed Ethereum’s rollup ecosystem. Among the various layered scaling efforts on Bitcoin, Citrea is the closest analogue to an Ethereum-style Layer-2.
As with Ethereum rollups, though, launching on mainnet is just the beginning. Below, I walk through some of the challenges Citrea is likely to face as it moves into its next phases of development.
Yours truly,
Christine D. Kim
🔔Programming note: Sponsorship opportunities for the BTC Before Light newsletter in 2026 are now available. If you have a business or product that you’d like to see featured in this newsletter, please reply directly to this email.
⏱️Core Release Schedule
(For background on the Bitcoin software development process, refer to the Bitcoin Governance 101 document in the BTC Toolkit.)
First, a quick overview of Bitcoin Core’s software release schedule and the status of the next major release:
Latest Stable Major Release: Bitcoin Core 30.0*
Release Date: October 13, 2025
Latest Stable Minor Release: Bitcoin Core 30.2*
Release Date: January 13, 2026
Upcoming Major Release: Bitcoin Core 31.0
Target Release Date: April 10, 2026
Open issues: 11
Closed issues: 33
Milestone progress: 75%
The previous week’s snapshot showed 10 open issues, 33 closed, and a milestone progress of 76%.
*Warning: Bitcoin Core v30.0 and 30.1 contain a wallet migration bug that may result in a loss of funds. A fix for the bug has been included in v30.2. Out of an abundance of caution, users should only attempt wallet migrations using v30.2.
📧 You’ve Got Mail! (& Other News)
(For a comprehensive overview of all major Bitcoin development meetings and discussion forums, refer to the Bitcoin Development Meetings document in the BTC Toolkit.)
An overview of notable Bitcoin Core development discussions and news, sourced from Gnusha Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Logs, the Bitcoin Development Mailing List, and other public forums:
Last Thursday, Bitcoin Core developers gathered for their weekly IRC meeting. (Gnusha IRC Logs) The following is an overview of the pull requests (PRs), issues, and comments that were raised during the meeting and their respective statuses:
PR #34374 (use structured logging and simplify kernel logging interface): Work-in-progress.
PR #31132 (fetch block inputs on parallel threads 3x faster IBD): Ready for review. New benchmarking results.
PR #34257 (deterministic optimal transaction order): Ready for review.
Issue #24380 (coins cache cleanup checklist): Open discussion.
Issue #1799 (different scanning approaches for Silent Payments): Open discussion.
Cluster mempool modification to GetMainStagingDiagram: Work-in-progress.
Chain concurrency commits: Work-in-progress.
There is a new release of libsecp256k1, version 0.7.1. This is a maintenance release that includes a minor security improvement, a new test framework, and a few build system changes. As background, libsecp256k1 is the main cryptographic library used to secure and validate Bitcoin transaction signatures. (Bitcoin Development Mailing List)
Spiral and the Human Rights Foundation have funded the development of a new educational resource called “Programming Lightning,” which teaches developers how the Bitcoin Lightning protocol works and how to code its key components from scratch. (Delving Bitcoin)
A minority of Bitcoin node operators (~3%) have initiated a soft fork of Bitcoin, signaling their intent to activate the consensus changes defined in Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 110. A threshold of 55% of node operators is required to automatically activate BIP-110 changes. The signaling period for BIP-110 is scheduled to end sometime in September of this year. (Bitcoin Talk)
Bitcoin Layer-2 protocol Citrea went live on mainnet on Tuesday, January 27. (X)
One of the oldest open issues of the Lightning protocol was recently fixed by Lightning Labs co-founder Olaoluwa “Roasbeef” Osuntokun. (Protos)
☁️ That’s all for my round-up of Bitcoin Core development discussion and news. Continue reading for my insights and pointed takeaways on these updates. To read the rest of the newsletter, make sure you are signed up for a premium subscription:
⛅ New to Bitcoin development and want to learn more about how the development process works? Explore the BTC Toolkit, which is included with a premium subscription. It contains evergreen resources and materials that teach you the fundamentals of tracking the evolution of Bitcoin like a pro:
☀️ I also offer professional consultations on Bitcoin protocol development and governance. If you’d like to learn more, please visit my advisory services website:
🔦 Discussion Spotlight
(For an overview of the key participants in the Bitcoin development process, refer to the Bitcoin Project Contributor Directory in the BTC Toolkit.)
Citrea went live on mainnet yesterday.
Unlike other Bitcoin Layer-2 protocols, such as Lightning, which are primarily focused on scalability and payments, Citrea focuses on programmability.
It is the closest analogue to an Ethereum-style Layer-2 built on Bitcoin.
