Good morning,
Before we get into today’s topic, a quick reminder that the next All Protocol Devs meetup is this Wednesday.
If you’re a protocol developer, researcher, investor, or simply curious about the evolution of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and blockchain infrastructure more broadly, I’d love to see you there.
The event is designed to bring together people across different blockchain ecosystems for thoughtful, technical conversations on the evolution of public blockchains.
Learn more about Wednesday’s event and how to sign up here.
Now onto tonight’s story.
This Thursday, a consequential crypto policy vote will take place in Washington. The U.S. Senate Banking Committee is expected to vote on the Clarity Act, a sweeping market structure bill designed to reshape how cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and public blockchain networks are regulated in the United States.
If the bill advances, lawmakers and industry leaders believe there is a narrow but real window for President Donald Trump to sign it into law by July 4. If it stalls, however, the odds of meaningful crypto legislation passing this year — or even before the end of the decade — drop sharply as political attention shifts toward the 2026 midterm elections.
Today, I break down why the Clarity Act matters for protocol developers, what it could change for Bitcoin and Ethereum, and why the debate over this bill is ultimately a debate about whether U.S. law will formally recognize decentralized blockchain networks as legitimate public infrastructure.
Let’s get into it.
Yours truly,
Christine D. Kim
⏱️Core Release Schedule
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 31.0
Release Date: April 20, 2026
Upcoming Major Release: Bitcoin Core 32.0
Target Release Date: October 10, 2026
Open issues: 16
Closed issues: 26
Milestone progress: 61%
Last week’s snapshot showed 15 open issues, 24 closed, and a 61% milestone progress.
📧 You’ve Got Mail! (& Other News)
Instead of their usual Thursday meeting over Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Bitcoin Core developers met in person last week for their annual “CoreDev” gathering. Thus, I have no meeting minutes to share this week.
While I await intel on what developers discussed at the CoreDev gathering last week, I’m bringing back an older section of this newsletter, the “You’ve Got Mail!” section, in place of my usual “Meeting Minutes”.
Here’s an overview of other online discussions that happened this past week from the Bitcoin Development Mailing List, Delving Bitcoin, and other Bitcoin discussion forums.
Olaoluwa Osuntokun, CTO of Lightning Labs, discusses low-hanging fruit for making the Bitcoin protocol quantum-safe. Osuntokun highlights that while most discussions about post-quantum Bitcoin focus on protecting wallets and signatures, Bitcoin’s encrypted network traffic is also vulnerable to attack. The piece walks through different design options for upgrading Bitcoin’s networking layer. More broadly, it highlights that preparing Bitcoin for a post-quantum world will likely happen incrementally, with networking upgrades serving as a lower-risk testing ground before tackling far more difficult consensus-level changes. (Bitcoin Development Mailing List)
Bitcoin Core contributor “0xB10C” explores whether Bitcoin nodes running behind home internet routers could connect directly to one another using a networking technique called “TCP hole punching.” The idea is still highly experimental, but developers are discussing whether this approach could improve connectivity for home users without requiring centralized infrastructure. (Delving Bitcoin)
Bitcoin Core contributor “instagibbs” explains in a new blog post how Bitcoin developers spent nearly a decade patching and redesigning Bitcoin Core’s transaction relay system to support Lightning and other Bitcoin Layer 2 protocols. The piece highlights a common pattern in open-source protocol development: When a problem is too difficult to solve directly, developers either temporarily constrain the problem or build entirely new infrastructure until a cleaner long-term solution becomes possible. (Spiral Substack)
☁️ That’s all for my summary of Bitcoin Core development. Continue reading for my insights. To read the rest of the newsletter, make sure you are signed up for a premium subscription:
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🧭 Insights
This Thursday, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee will vote on the Clarity Act and a series of proposed amendments attached to the bill.
