A paper about the PoWswap protocol has been posted to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list, which outlines how it can allow the creation of on-chain enforceable contracts related to the change in hash rate. The PoWSwap protocol takes advantage of the protocol-enforced relationship between time and block production, plus the ability to express time locks in either time or blocks. The envisioned applications of this contract include hashrate increase and decrease insurance and exchange rate contracts. The paper provides more detail and analysis than previously seen for this type of contract. In other news, Bitcoin Optech celebrated their 250th newsletter and fifth year anniversary. New releases and release candidates for popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects were also announced, including Bitcoin Core 24.1rc2 and Bitcoin Core 25.0rc1. Additionally, notable changes were made to Bitcoin Core, Core Lightning, Eclair, LDK, LND, libsecp256k1, Hardware Wallet Interface (HWI), Rust Bitcoin, BTCPay Server, Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs), Lightning BOLTs, and Bitcoin Inquisition.
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