Book #27 - Programming Bitcoin

Programming Bitcoin: Learn How to Program Bitcoin from Scratch
by Jimmy Song (2019)

Thursday evenings - 5 pm pacific time / 7 pm central time

Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/the-south-padre-island-reading-group/events/285731823
Zoom: Join our Cloud HD Video Meeting
Discord: Join the Los Gatos Reading Group Discord Server!
O’Reilly: https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/programming-bitcoin/9781492031482/
Jupyter notebook exercises: GitHub - jimmysong/programmingbitcoin: Repository for the book

Finished!

Congratulations everyone, we’ve completed the book! Next we’re on to a hackergarden in a few weeks with a Go bitcoin repo that has some issues we might try to address. Also I’ll be reading about Sapio as a side reading with perhaps some ad-hoc meetups. (I have not taken a position on BIP-119 yet. I’d like to understand it better first.)

Other topics, among others, we plan to look at - taproot, lightning network (the book), and drivechains

Chapter 13 Segwit May 18, 2022	Presenter

Chapter 13 Segwit May 18, 2022	Presenter
Pay-to-Witness-Pubkey-Hash (p2wpkh) pswpkh Transactions	Doug
p2sh-p2wpkh	Amit
Pay-to-Witness-Script-Hash (p2wsh)	Casey
p2sh-p2wsh Other improvements	Casey

Chapter 11 SPV (Merkle Trees) May 5, 2022	Presenter

Chapter 11 SPV (Merkle Trees) May 5, 2022	Presenter
Motivation Merkle Tree Merkle Parent Merkle Parent Level	Amit
Merkle Root Merkle Root in Blocks Using a Merkle Tree	Doug
Merkle Block	Casey

Chapter 10 Networking April 21, 2022	Presenter

Chapter 10 Networking April 21, 2022	Presenter
Network Messages Parsing the Payload	Doug
Network Handshake Connecting to the Network	Amit
Getting Block Headers Headers Response	Casey

Chapter 9 Blocks April 14, 2022	Presenter

Chapter 9 Blocks April 14, 2022	Presenter
Coinbase Transaction	Casey
Block Headers	Casey
Proof-of-Work	Doug

Chapter 8 Pay-to-Script Hash March 17, 2022	Presenter

Chapter 8 Pay-to-Script Hash March 17, 2022	Presenter
Bare Multisig	Doug
Problems with Bare Multisig	Doug
Pay-to-Script-Hash (p2sh)	Casey

Chapter 7 Transaction Creation and Validation March 3, 2022 March 17, 2022	Presenter

Chapter 7 Transaction Creation and Validation March 3, 2022 March 17, 2022	Presenter
Validating Transactions	Doug
Creating Transactions	Amit - March 17, 2022
Creating Your Own Transactions on testnet	Casey

Chapter 6 Script February 24, 2022	Presenter

Chapter 6 Script February 24, 2022	Presenter
Mechanics of Script How Script Works Example Operations Parsing the Script Fields Combining the Script Fields	Casey
Standard Scripts p2pk	Doug
Problems with p2pk Solving the Problems with p2pkh	Casey
Scripts Can Be Arbitrarily Constructed	Doug

Chapter 5 Transaction February 17, 2022	Presenter

Chapter 5 Transaction February 17, 2022	Presenter
Transaction Components	Praveen
Version Inputs	Casey
Outputs	Casey
Locktime	Doug
Transaction Fee	Doug

Chapter 4 Serialization February 10, 2022	Presenter

Chapter 4 Serialization February 10, 2022	Presenter
Uncompressed SEC Format	Doug
Compressed SEC Format	Casey
DER Signature	Amit
Base58	Casey
Big- and Little-Endian Redux	Doug

Extra notes from January 27

p is the order of the finite field

n is the order of the cycle of points from the generator point G, such that n*G=0

Both p and n are prime.

Both p and n are very close to 2²⁵⁶ , and n < p

Integers in the range [0, 2²⁵⁶⁾ - 1] can be stored in 32 bytes and can be displayed with 64 hex characters

So, too, can integers in the range [0, p] or [0, n]

Extra notes from February 3

Notes on Signing and Verification

Chapter 3 Elliptic Curve Cryptography January 27, 2022 February 3, 2022	Presenter

Chapter 3 Elliptic Curve Cryptography January 27, 2022 February 3, 2022	Presenter
Elliptic Curves over Reals Elliptic Curves over Finite Fields	Melissa
Point Addition over Finite Fields Scalar Multiplication for Elliptic Curves Scalar Multiplication Redux	Casey
Mathematical Groups	Doug
Defining the Curve for Bitcoin	Casey - February 3
Public Key Cryptography Signing and Verification	Casey - February 3

Chapter 2 Elliptic Curves January 20, 2022	Presenter

Chapter 2 Elliptic Curves January 20, 2022	Presenter
Definition	Melissa Simpson
Point Addition	Melissa Simpson
Math of Point Addition	Casey
Point Addition for When x1 != x2	Casey
Point Addition for When P1 = P2	Doug
Coding One More Exception	Doug

Notes on Chapter 1 -

Here’s a full proof of Fermat’s Little Theorem for those who are interested in the nitty-gritty details ttps://www.coursera.org/learn/number-theory-cryptography/lecture/8ZcIG/fermats-little-theorem

Chapter 1 Finite Fields January 6, 2022 January 13, 2022	Presenter

Chapter 1 Finite Fields January 6, 2022 January 13, 2022	Presenter
Learning Higher-Level Math Finite Field Definition Defining Finite Sets	Casey
Modulo Arithmetic	Melissa - January 13
Finite Field Addition and Subtraction	Doug - January 13
Finite Field Multiplication and Exponentiation	Doug - January 13
Finite Field Division	Casey - January 13
Redefining Exponentiation	Casey - January 13