China News Daily TheBitTimes.com

A group of developers that manages the world’s most popular full node software, Bitcoin Core, continues to assert their view that the OP_RETURN war of 2025 is over, they’ve won, and their dissidents are unserious people following a hillbilly leader. Their latest jeers include a new nickname for their opposition, “Knotzis,” and cackling at a minor Knots software bug. They continue to bask in their victory despite a growing displacement of their actual software’s dominance across the Bitcoin network. Indeed, Knots users — who protest Core’s OP_RETURN changes — have grown 10-fold this year, going from fewer than 400 to nearly 4,000 internet-connected nodes. Reachable Core node operators, in contrast, haven’t multiplied, hovering around 20,000 across the same time period . In brief, the OP_RETURN war is this year’s most contentious disagreement between Bitcoin developers. Core devs want to ease the memory storage capabilities of the OP_RE...

An issue with WhatsApp’s disappearing media feature has finally been fixed, months after it was first discovered by crypto wallet startup Zengo’s technical team. The View Once feature was introduced by WhatsApp to protect its users’ privacy by allowing them to send pictures and videos that would automatically be wiped once viewed. However, in August, Zengo’s team discovered that the feature could be “trivially bypassed” when using the platform’s web app. The team says it disclosed the issue to WhatsApp but when it became clear that the issue had already been “exploited in the wild,” it made its findings public “to protect the privacy of WhatsApp’s users.” WhatsApp responded with a quick patch but this reportedly still allowed the supposedly deleted images to be viewed. Now, the messaging platform says, it’s rolled out a more comprehensive software update. Zengo detailed its discovery of the problem ...