Here's an update from the Voltage team on the latest FOSS Friday.
What is FOSS Friday?
FOSS Friday is our bi-weekly innovation day at Voltage! On these days, our team dives into the exciting world of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software). Why, you may ask? Well, Bitcoin and the Lightning network, the very core of our work, are open source technology.
As a bitcoin infrastructure company, we don't just use open source; we actively contribute to it. This is a symbiotic relationship for us: by contributing to these projects, we can do our part to bolster the bitcoin ecosystem while also uncovering fresh, innovative ideas.
What did we do?
NOAA Data Pipeline
NOAA Data Pipeline is a project that allows you to query for weather data inside the web browser. It takes in raw data from NOAA and makes it much more easily searchable.
Taylor continued working on converting his noaa-data-pipeline project into a data oracle. Basically,it generates a public + private keypair for a Nostr identity. This keypair can sign and attest to any arbitrary data.
Suppose four people decided to make betting predictions on the weather for next Thursday. Hey, betting on sports and the election gets old after a while, right? They each create an entry into an event (think competition) that the oracle will attest to who is the most accurate at predicting (highest scoring). With this event, a dlctix coordinator will generate a collection of transactions that will move the bitcoin based on the outcome of the event. Each person, and the coordinator, will have to pre-sign these transactions.
A couple days after the prediction time, we have recorded weather data from the affected stations. The oracle pulls in the raw data from NOAA, then runs it through an ETL process that scores each entry and finds the winner. After the data is in the appropriate format, it signs and publishes an attestation event for the winning scores. Using this signature, the winning prediction can claim the signature and use it to claim the bitcoin by publishing the correct pre-signed transaction.
NOAA Data Pipeline needs a UI and a Coordinator, but the Oracle is working!
Custom Signets
Brandon worked on a new blog post draft about Bitcoin signet. After our launch of both Lightning and Bitcoin Core nodes on Mutinynet, he was curious to learn more about the fundamentals of how Bitcoin signets work and how to launch your own signet.
For the uninitiated, Bitcoin has “mainnet”, which is where the real bitcoin lives. In addition, there are several test networks strictly for development purposes, like “testnet” and “signet”. While there is the signet, one can also create a custom signet, as is the case with Mutinynet.
Neutrino Replit & Create Voltage App
Austin worked on a demo of how to deploy a bitcoin core and lightning node that uses Neutrino. Neutrino is a method for quickly sync block data. Intended primarily for mobile use-cases, Neutrino is a lightweight protocol that allows users to securely and privately verify their transactions without needing a full blockchain. Neutrino does this using compact block filters.
Austin made a repl which helps you spin up a lightning and bitcoin node. It syncs the relevant chain data for the wallet within 30 seconds of starting!
Austin also worked more on create-voltage-app, our CLI tool for creating boilerplate web applications connected to your lightning node. He is working on adding more sample projects, components, and apps that you can easily connect to your lightning node from CLI.
Fedimint UI & Bitcoin Dev Project- Stephen
Stephen made small updates to a couple of projects. He spent time consulting with the Bitcoin Dev Project on their website and continued logo design work for the project. After that, he learned how to set up the developer environment for Fedimint UI and had enough time in the day to get a very tiny PR merged that makes the login field not gigantic and more comfortable looking. It was a small PR to learn how the PR review process for this project works. It turns out, it’s run by robots.
Payjoin
While Payjoins are typically thought of as a privacy technology (they are), there is a lesser explored world of scalability and fee optimization.
For example, Payjoins could be used for output consolidation. Instead of receiving a UTXO, then consolidating it with other UTXOs in another transaction, a Payjoin could be used to receive and consolidate in a single transaction. Another example would be optimizing lightning channel management: instead of receiving a UTXO, then using it to open a lightning channel, you could use a Payjoin to receive directly into a channel open. To push this further, what if you could use the Payjoin coordination process to facilitate transaction cut-through?
Brandon and Stephen brainstormed ideas for telling better stories around these Payjoin use-cases, thinking it through from the perspective of businesses, wallet developers, and end users. To be continued!
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That’s all for this week!
