Bitcoin Resilience Presentations — August 5
3 messages, 30 Jul to 6 Aug 2026. Started by Shannon Appelcline.
Shannon Appelcline (3)
Next Wednesday, August 5th at 10am PT, Blockchain Commons will host a Bitcoin-focused Gordian Developers Meeting about improving the protection of your secrets.
The general goal is to demonstrate how you can ensure the resilience of your Bitcoin Core–stored assets by integrating Bitcoin Core into the wider Bitcoin ecosystem.
We will demonstrate how to: * Export descriptors from Bitcoin Core. * Export extended private keys from Bitcoin Core. * Use Shamir's Secret Sharing & metadata to store & protect that exported data.
Also: * Create a BIP-39 secret remotely. * Shard that secret. * Import descriptors derived from the BIP-39 secret into Bitcoin Core.
Finally: * Exchange QRs for all of the above (and more) securely on the internet
This will be done through two presentations: "Sharding Secrets to Protect Your Bitcoin" and "Using Keylay to Securely Exchange Airgapped QRs". We think they'll both be of interest to the Bitcoin community & we invite you to attend!
WHAT? Securing Your Bitcoin with Entropy, Seeds, Shards, Airgaps, and More
WHEN? August 5th, 10am PT
WHERE? https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88143195571?pwd=rgVeDCgOKT3IMtBiISego4p5wK0s6F.1
Shannon Appelcline (that's me!), Lead Author of Learning Bitcoin from the Command Line, will present on *"Sharding Secrets to Protect Your Bitcoin"*. Currently, Bitcoin Core doesn't support a number of notable resilience features such as BIP-39 entropy or mnemonics, seed import, or Shamir's Secret Sharing. This presentation will talk about the difference between BIP-32 and BIP-39 before demonstrating how to make use of all of these features while working with Bitcoin Core, either by importing an entropy-based descriptor into Bitcoin Core or exporting a master extended key from it. It'll also offer additional best practices on using metadata to ensure that you know what a secret is at some far future date when you recover it.
Stan Reeves, Professor Emeritus of ECE, Auburn University, will present on *Keylay*. BIP-129 standardized the multisig setup file format, but nothing standardizes how remote participants exchange it. In practice, xpubs, descriptors, and PSBTs move over email, messaging apps, or centralized coordinators, breaking air gaps and leaking metadata. Thie presentation will demonstrate a session-layer design for remote multisig coordination: ephemeral X25519 pairwise sessions with no accounts or persistent identity, a relay treated as adversarial (ciphertext only), air-gap bridging via BC-UR/BBQr animated QR, and pluggable transport targeting Nostr (websocket now, Nostr proposed).
Shannon Lead Tech Writer Blockchain Commons
Hey Folks,
Just a reminder that this presentation is tomorrow:
WHAT? Securing Your Bitcoin with Entropy, Seeds, Shards, Airgaps, and More WHEN? August 5th, 10am PT WHERE? https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88143195571?pwd=rgVeDCgOKT3IMtBiISego4p5wK0s6F.1
The Coldcard seed-creation failure revealed over the weekend definitely showed off one of the many ways that self-sovereign controlled funds can be vulnerable. Some of the techniques that I plan to talk about tomorrow help you to control the fallout of that sort of failure by maintaining good metadata that records where a seed or key originated from.
Hope to see you there.
Shannon
On Thursday, July 30, 2026 at 1:40:45 PM UTC-10 Shannon Appelcline wrote:
Quoted text (61 lines)
> Next Wednesday, August 5th at 10am PT, Blockchain Commons will host a > Bitcoin-focused Gordian Developers Meeting about improving the protection > of your secrets. > > The general goal is to demonstrate how you can ensure the resilience of > your Bitcoin Core–stored assets by integrating Bitcoin Core into the wider > Bitcoin ecosystem. > > We will demonstrate how to: > * Export descriptors from Bitcoin Core. > * Export extended private keys from Bitcoin Core. > * Use Shamir's Secret Sharing & metadata to store & protect that exported > data. > > Also: > * Create a BIP-39 secret remotely. > * Shard that secret. > * Import descriptors derived from the BIP-39 secret into Bitcoin Core. > > Finally: > * Exchange QRs for all of the above (and more) securely on the internet > > This will be done through two presentations: "Sharding Secrets to Protect > Your Bitcoin" and "Using Keylay to Securely Exchange Airgapped QRs". We > think they'll both be of interest to the Bitcoin community & we invite you > to attend! > > WHAT? Securing Your Bitcoin with Entropy, Seeds, Shards, Airgaps, and More > > WHEN? August 5th, 10am PT > > WHERE? > https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88143195571?pwd=rgVeDCgOKT3IMtBiISego4p5wK0s6F.1 > > Shannon Appelcline (that's me!), Lead Author of Learning Bitcoin from the > Command Line, will present on *"Sharding Secrets to Protect Your Bitcoin"*. > Currently, Bitcoin Core doesn't support a number of notable resilience > features such as BIP-39 entropy or mnemonics, seed import, or Shamir's > Secret Sharing. This presentation will talk about the difference between > BIP-32 and BIP-39 before demonstrating how to make use of all of these > features while working with Bitcoin Core, either by importing an > entropy-based descriptor into Bitcoin Core or exporting a master extended > key from it. It'll also offer additional best practices on using metadata > to ensure that you know what a secret is at some far future date when you > recover it. > > Stan Reeves, Professor Emeritus of ECE, Auburn University, will present on > *Keylay*. BIP-129 standardized the multisig setup file format, but > nothing standardizes how remote participants exchange it. In practice, > xpubs, descriptors, and PSBTs move over email, messaging apps, or > centralized coordinators, breaking air gaps and leaking metadata. Thie > presentation will demonstrate a session-layer design for remote multisig > coordination: ephemeral X25519 pairwise sessions with no accounts or > persistent identity, a relay treated as adversarial (ciphertext only), > air-gap bridging via BC-UR/BBQr animated QR, and pluggable transport > targeting Nostr (websocket now, Nostr proposed). > > Shannon > Lead Tech Writer > Blockchain Commons >
Hey Folks,
We held our meeting today about Bitcoin interoperability & resilience. We've got all the records of the meeting including the full meeting video and slides here:
https://developer.blockchaincommons.com/meetings/2026-08-resilience/
I presented specifically on Bitcoin Core, showing off some tools (and a technique) for extracting a descriptor or master private key from Bitcoin Core so that you can better preserve it using Shamir's Secret Sharing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckUwWCFqua8
We also had a presentation from Stan Reeves on Keylay, a technology he's putting together to make multisigs easier by allowing the clean transmission of QRs and Animated QRs through a secure communication system. That video is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAsxoo3Rqn4
Shannon
On Tuesday, August 4, 2026 at 10:03:31 AM UTC-10 Shannon Appelcline wrote:
Quoted text (84 lines)
> Hey Folks, > > Just a reminder that this presentation is tomorrow: > > > WHAT? Securing Your Bitcoin with Entropy, Seeds, Shards, Airgaps, and More > WHEN? August 5th, 10am PT > WHERE? > https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88143195571?pwd=rgVeDCgOKT3IMtBiISego4p5wK0s6F.1 > > The Coldcard seed-creation failure revealed over the weekend definitely > showed off one of the many ways that self-sovereign controlled funds can be > vulnerable. Some of the techniques that I plan to talk about tomorrow help > you to control the fallout of that sort of failure by maintaining good > metadata that records where a seed or key originated from. > > Hope to see you there. > > Shannon > > On Thursday, July 30, 2026 at 1:40:45 PM UTC-10 Shannon Appelcline wrote: > >> Next Wednesday, August 5th at 10am PT, Blockchain Commons will host a >> Bitcoin-focused Gordian Developers Meeting about improving the protection >> of your secrets. >> >> The general goal is to demonstrate how you can ensure the resilience of >> your Bitcoin Core–stored assets by integrating Bitcoin Core into the wider >> Bitcoin ecosystem. >> >> We will demonstrate how to: >> * Export descriptors from Bitcoin Core. >> * Export extended private keys from Bitcoin Core. >> * Use Shamir's Secret Sharing & metadata to store & protect that exported >> data. >> >> Also: >> * Create a BIP-39 secret remotely. >> * Shard that secret. >> * Import descriptors derived from the BIP-39 secret into Bitcoin Core. >> >> Finally: >> * Exchange QRs for all of the above (and more) securely on the internet >> >> This will be done through two presentations: "Sharding Secrets to Protect >> Your Bitcoin" and "Using Keylay to Securely Exchange Airgapped QRs". We >> think they'll both be of interest to the Bitcoin community & we invite you >> to attend! >> >> WHAT? Securing Your Bitcoin with Entropy, Seeds, Shards, Airgaps, and More >> >> WHEN? August 5th, 10am PT >> >> WHERE? >> https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88143195571?pwd=rgVeDCgOKT3IMtBiISego4p5wK0s6F.1 >> >> Shannon Appelcline (that's me!), Lead Author of Learning Bitcoin from the >> Command Line, will present on *"Sharding Secrets to Protect Your >> Bitcoin"*. Currently, Bitcoin Core doesn't support a number of notable >> resilience features such as BIP-39 entropy or mnemonics, seed import, or >> Shamir's Secret Sharing. This presentation will talk about the difference >> between BIP-32 and BIP-39 before demonstrating how to make use of all of >> these features while working with Bitcoin Core, either by importing an >> entropy-based descriptor into Bitcoin Core or exporting a master extended >> key from it. It'll also offer additional best practices on using metadata >> to ensure that you know what a secret is at some far future date when you >> recover it. >> >> Stan Reeves, Professor Emeritus of ECE, Auburn University, will present >> on *Keylay*. BIP-129 standardized the multisig setup file format, but >> nothing standardizes how remote participants exchange it. In practice, >> xpubs, descriptors, and PSBTs move over email, messaging apps, or >> centralized coordinators, breaking air gaps and leaking metadata. Thie >> presentation will demonstrate a session-layer design for remote multisig >> coordination: ephemeral X25519 pairwise sessions with no accounts or >> persistent identity, a relay treated as adversarial (ciphertext only), >> air-gap bridging via BC-UR/BBQr animated QR, and pluggable transport >> targeting Nostr (websocket now, Nostr proposed). >> >> Shannon >> Lead Tech Writer >> Blockchain Commons >> >