Newsletter: add 362 (2025-07-11)

Author: harding

_posts/en/newsletters/2025-07-11-newsletter.md

@@ -0,0 +1,76 @@
+---
+title: 'Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #362'
+permalink: /en/newsletters/2025/07/11/
+name: 2025-07-11-newsletter
+slug: 2025-07-11-newsletter
+type: newsletter
+layout: newsletter
+lang: en
+---
+This week's newsletter briefly describes a new library allowing output
+script descriptors to be compressed for use in QR codes.  Also included
+are our regular sections summarizing a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club
+meeting, announcing new releases and release candidates, and describing
+notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.
+
+## News
+
+- **Compressed descriptors:** Josh Doman [posted][dorman descom] to
+  Delving Bitcoin to announce a [library][descriptor-codec] he's written
+  that encodes [output script descriptors][topic descriptors] into a
+  binary format that reduces their size by about 40%.  This can be
+  especially useful when descriptors are backed up using QR codes.  His
+  post goes into the details of the encoding and mentions that he plans
+  to incorporate the compression into his encrypted descriptors backup
+  library (see [Newsletter #358][news358 descencrypt]).
+
+## Bitcoin Core PR Review Club
+
+*In this monthly section, we summarize a recent [Bitcoin Core PR Review
+Club][] meeting, highlighting some of the important questions and
+answers.  Click on a question below to see a summary of the answer from
+the meeting.*
+
+FIXME:stickies-v
+
+{% include functions/details-list.md
+  q0="FIXME"
+  a0="FIXME"
+  a0link="https://bitcoincore.reviews/32317#l-37FIXME"
+%}
+
+## Releases and release candidates
+
+_New releases and release candidates for popular Bitcoin infrastructure
+projects.  Please consider upgrading to new releases or helping to test
+release candidates._
+
+- [LND v0.19.2-beta.rc2][] is a release candidate for a maintenance
+  version of this popular LN node.
+
+## Notable code and documentation changes
+
+_Notable recent changes in [Bitcoin Core][bitcoin core repo], [Core
+Lightning][core lightning repo], [Eclair][eclair repo], [LDK][ldk repo],
+[LND][lnd repo], [libsecp256k1][libsecp256k1 repo], [Hardware Wallet
+Interface (HWI)][hwi repo], [Rust Bitcoin][rust bitcoin repo], [BTCPay
+Server][btcpay server repo], [BDK][bdk repo], [Bitcoin Improvement
+Proposals (BIPs)][bips repo], [Lightning BOLTs][bolts repo],
+[Lightning BLIPs][blips repo], [Bitcoin Inquisition][bitcoin inquisition
+repo], and [BINANAs][binana repo]._
+
+- [Core Lightning #8377][]
+  - BOLT11: Make payment secret field ('s') mandatory
+  - bolt11: don't accept wrong-length p, h, s or n fields.
+
+- [BDK #1957][] feat(electrum): optimize merkle proof validation with batching
+
+- [BIPs #1888][] 380: Disallow H as a hardened indicator
+
+{% include snippets/recap-ad.md when="2025-07-15 16:30" %}
+{% include references.md %}
+{% include linkers/issues.md v=2 issues="8377,1957,1888" %}
+[LND v0.19.2-beta.rc2]: https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/releases/tag/v0.19.2-beta.rc2
+[news358 descencrypt]: /en/newsletters/2025/06/13/#descriptor-encryption-library
+[dorman descom]: https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/a-rust-library-to-encode-descriptors-with-a-30-40-size-reduction/1804
+[descriptor-codec]: https://github.com/joshdoman/descriptor-codec