BTC Before Light: Issue 45 ☀️
Introducing the Orange Dev Suite, a new tool to track Bitcoin
Good morning,
Today, I’m excited to share a new tool for tracking Bitcoin development and governance called the Orange Dev Suite.
The tool is not mine. I recently learned about it, looked into it, and think it is worth highlighting.
As my readers should already know, I am a huge fan of tools that make Bitcoin development and governance easier for more people to follow. It’s why I do what I do, and why I built the BTC Toolkit last year.
This new tool I’ll discuss below comes pretty close to what I envisioned for the BTC Toolkit 2.0, which is why I’m excited to share it with you today.
Now, for any of my readers wondering how I think about the role of my coverage alongside tools like the Orange Dev Suite, I view these tools as complementary to my independent coverage.
Yes, there is some overlap, but this kind of overlap is long overdue and creates opportunities for specialization in Bitcoin development analysis that otherwise didn’t exist. In short, it takes a village to cover Bitcoin development and governance, so all contributions are welcome!
Let’s get into it.
Yours truly,
Christine D. Kim
P.S. For all my free subscribers, please take advantage of my summer special, which gives you access to all my paid posts for a trial period of two months. The offer expires August 31! Happy reading~
⏱️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: 19
Closed issues: 43
Milestone progress: 69%
Last week’s snapshot showed 22 open issues, 35 closed, and a 61% milestone progress.
🖊️ Meeting Log
An overview of the Bitcoin Core developers meeting that took place last Thursday, June 18, 2026, sourced from Internet Relay Chat (IRC) logs recorded by Chaincode Labs.
Issues
Descriptions of bugs and areas for improvement in Bitcoin Core and their respective status:
None raised during last Thursday’s meeting.
Pull Requests (PRs)
Proposed code changes to Bitcoin Core and their respective status:
Ready for review
Bitcoin/bitcoin, PR #35215—coins: use jumboblock SipHash-1-3 for hashing CCoinsMap keys
Bitcoin/bitcoin, PR #35295—validation: fetch block input prevouts in parallel during ConnectBlock
Merged
Bitcoin-core/secp256k1, PR #1859—field: force-inline 5x52 mul and sqr
Bitcoin/bitcoin, PR #35465—coins: compact chainstate regularly
Bitcoin/bitcoin, PR #34636—node: allocate index caches proportional to usage patterns
Discussion Topics
Purple Karrot “Serialization” blog post: Serialization is the process of converting data, like a Bitcoin transaction or block, into an exact byte format that can be stored, sent, and verified by other computers. Bitcoin Core contributor “Purple Karrot” details in this blog post the motivation and design for making Bitcoin’s serialization code more explicit, lighter-weight, and safer.
QML GUI Working Group (WG) update: The WG is developing a newer, more modern interface for Bitcoin Core. Bitcoin Core already includes an optional wallet and graphical interface, and the QML effort is an experimental rewrite/fork of that GUI using Qt’s QML framework. During this Thursday’s meeting, “Johnny9dev” said the QML GUI project is nearing the point where people outside the working group can start testing it. There are currently four PRs under review, and once those are finished, the team expects to start sharing preview builds.
Introducing bitcoind-gunix: Bitcoin Core contributor “b10c” shared an experimental side project called
bitcoind-gunixthat successfully reproduces the official Bitcoin Core v31.0 release using Nix instead of Guix. In other words, the project can rebuild all of the official release files — including binaries, tarballs, debug files, and signing artifacts — and produce outputs that match the official Guix-built release byte-for-byte.Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) repository summer cleaning: Bitcoin Core contributor “Murch” asked BIP authors to review their draft BIPs on GitHub and open a PR if they think any should be closed or advanced to a different status.
🌟 PR Spotlight
PR #34636
Category: Bitcoin/bitcoin, the reference implementation for Bitcoin Core full nodes, which enables users to directly connect to the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network and download and validate blocks and transactions. The implementation also includes an optional wallet and graphical user interface.
Title: “node: allocate index caches proportional to usage patterns”
Author: “svanstaa”
Status: Merged
Date opened: February 20, 2026
Most recent update: June 18, 2026
What it does: This PR changes how Bitcoin Core allocates cache space to optional indexes. An index is a lookup tool that helps Bitcoin Core nodes find data more quickly, such as information about transactions or blocks. This PR makes the allocation more explicit by assigning cache space based on how frequently the indexes are typically used.
Why it matters: Cache is memory set aside to make repeated data lookups faster. In theory, allocating it more intentionally can make Bitcoin Core’s resource usage cleaner and easier to reason about.
However, as noted by Bitcoin Core contributor “sipa” during last Thursday’s meeting, his recent findings suggest this PR may not be necessary after further analysis of one of Bitcoin Core’s internal databases, LevelDB, and its resource limits.
☁️ 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
When it comes to understanding the value of open-source blockchain protocols, there is no better place to start than with the development process itself.
As I have shared in the ACD and BTC Toolkit series, understanding the people, forums, and processes through which public blockchains are developed is the best way to track how these technologies and their value evolve over time.
This is one of the unique strengths of tracking any open-source technology. Value is not determined behind closed doors and then shipped out to users in new product releases. You can watch development happen in real time. You can see the conversations shaping the technology, the disagreements that slow or redirect work, and the priorities that emerge when long-time code maintainers leave, and new ones take over.
This matters especially for Bitcoin, a multi-billion-dollar protocol that is rapidly gaining institutional adoption and government attention. Bitcoin has no CEO and no formal roadmap. Its development is governed by a loose, open-source process that can be difficult to follow without knowing who the contributors are, where they are talking, and what they are most focused on doing or changing about Bitcoin.
That is why I am excited to share a new resource for tracking Bitcoin development and governance called the Orange Dev Suite, created by Bitcoin Data Labs.
(Disclaimer: I did not build this tool and have no affiliation with it. I have spoken with the founder of Bitcoin Data Labs, Saurabh Kumar, but I did not receive payment, promotion, or anything else in exchange for writing about Bitcoin Data Labs. As with all my writing on this Substack, my views are independent.)
