Draft Signet reading list for London Socratic

Socratic Seminar on Signet - Wednesday August 19th 10am BST
https://www.meetup.com/BitDevsLDN/events/272121581/

Testnet

Bitcoin’s Test Blockchains (Mastering Bitcoin, Andreas Antonopoulos, p207)
https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook/blob/25569ba10142a55a0c26d32033d06c5b1033e7ea/ch09.asciidoc#bitcoins-test-blockchains

Creating Your Own Transactions on testnet (Programming Bitcoin, Jimmy Song p141)
https://github.com/jimmysong/programmingbitcoin/blob/3377d6af0dc9d828d3d51ae556f308555eace87d/ch07.asciidoc#creating-your-own-transactions-on-testnet

Testnet on Bitcoin Wiki
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Testnet

16k blocks were found in 1 day on testnet3
https://web.archive.org/web/20160910173004/https://blog.blocktrail.com/2015/04/in-the-darkest-depths-of-testnet3-16k-blocks-were-found-in-1-day/

Has the testnet ever been reset?
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9975/has-the-testnet-ever-been-reset?noredirect=1&lq=1

Testnet version history
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/36252/testnet-version-history?rq=1

Testnet3 commit: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/feeb761ba07af74a7cd78b8c8f7c2a961fd9ea1c

Proposed testnet reset (testnet4)
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2019-June/017031.html

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2018-August/016341.html

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/19666

Regtest

Richard Bondi workshop at Austin Bitcoin Devs on regtest
https://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/austin-bitcoin-developers/2018-08-17-richard-bondi-bitcoin-cli-regtest/

Bisq tutorial on how to set up regtest
https://bisq.network/blog/how-to-set-up-bitcoin-regtest/

“You can in practice start up a regtest and addnode people all over the world to create a network, though it would be completely vulnerable.” Kalle Alm
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/803#discussion_r304907257

What are the key differences between regtest and Signet? (Bitcoin StackExchange)
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/89640/what-are-the-key-differences-between-regtest-and-the-proposed-signet

“The signet protocol allows creating testnets where all valid new blocks must be signed by a centralized party. Although this centralization would be antithetical to Bitcoin, it’s ideal for a testnet where testers sometimes want to create a disruptive scenario (such as a chain reorganization) and other times just want a stable platform to use for testing software interoperation. On Bitcoin’s existing testnet, reorgs and other disruptions can occur frequently and for prolonged lengths of time, making regular testing impractical.” (Bitcoin Optech)

“allowing the operators of the signet to control the rate of block production and the frequency and magnitude of block chain reorganizations”

“The authority generally produces a regular series of blocks but may occasionally produce forks leading to block chain reorganizations. This avoids commonly-encountered problems on testnet such as too-fast block production, too-slow block production, and reorganizations involving thousands of blocks.”

Signet

Announcement of Signet on Bitcoin dev mailing list
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2019-March/016734.html

Signet on Bitcoin Wiki:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Signet

Kalle on Signet Integration at Advancing Bitcoin
https://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/advancing-bitcoin/2020/2020-02-06-kalle-alm-signet-integration/

Kalle Signet workshop at Advancing Bitcoin
https://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/advancing-bitcoin/2020/2020-02-07-kalle-alm-signet-workshop/

BIP 325: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0325.mediawiki

Discussion of Signet at Bitcoin Core developer meeting
http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/bitcoin-core-dev-tech/2019-06-07-signet/

Signet faucet: https://signet.bc-2.jp/

Signet explorer: https://explorer.bc-2.jp/

AJ Towns Bitcoin Core PR to BIP 325
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/947

Bitcoin Core Signet PR 16411 (closed)
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/16411

Bitcoin Core Signet PR 18267 (open)
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/18267

“There is a tiny amount of risk involved as it touches consensus validation code, but this is a tiny code change. If for some reason someone managed to flip the "signet" flag on a running node, for example, that would cause those nodes to start rejecting bitcoin blocks. I don't foresee this as very likely, personally.” Kalle Alm

Signet integrated in c-lightning
https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/pull/2816

Fabian Jahr Signet2 with ANYPREVOUT and Taproot enabled
https://github.com/fjahr/signet2

Signet and hardcoding the genesis block hash (Nicolas Dorier)
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/16411#issuecomment-577999888

“All signets use the same hardcoded genesis block (block 0) but independent signets can be differentiated by their network magic (message start bytes). In the updated protocol, the message start bytes are the first four bytes of a hash digest of the network’s challenge script (the script used to determine whether a block has a valid signature). The change was motivated by a desire to simplify the development of applications that want to use multiple signets but which need to call libraries that hardcode the genesis blocks for the networks they support.” Bitcoin Optech

“It should just be a shared public network, an alternative (or replacement) of testnet.” Nicolas Dorier

Updated to use new 1-of-2 key for the new Signet network (new 2nd key maintained by AJ Towns).
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/18267#issuecomment-671686673

Signet as a high priority blocker for Bitcoin Core review
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/projects/8

Signet platform (Kalle Alm)
https://github.com/kallewoof/signet-platform

btcdeb

“Specifically, it is a signet + taproot branch running the network, and a btcdeb + taproot branch running the debugger/toolset.”

btcdeb
https://github.com/bitcoin-core/btcdeb

PR to add Taproot to btcdeb
https://github.com/bitcoin-core/btcdeb/pull/40

Tapscript example on btcdeb:
https://github.com/bitcoin-core/btcdeb/blob/taproot/doc/tapscript-example-with-tap.md

Kalle on Twitter spending a Tapscript output on Signet
https://twitter.com/kallewoof/status/1222080714193166336?s=20