I'm proud to announce version 3.000 release of Bitcoin::Crypto, Perl's cryptographic toolkit for Bitcoin.
This release features the switch of internal ECDSA engine to libsecp256k1. To achieve this, Alien::libsecp256k1 (automatic library compilation) and Bitcoin::Secp256k1 (XS interface to the library) modules were also released. This library provides much faster and safer ECDSA specific to Bitcoin. It also opens a way to implement further additions to the library which may need elliptic curve math, such as Taproot support.
Even though a lot of effort was put into ensuring an automatic compilation of the library on all major OSes, it is still not known how much less portable the new setup will be. The major version jump was made to reflect that potential complications in module installation, even though its interface remained unchanged.
I am open to contributions. The TODO list is available in "TODO" in Bitcoin::Crypto::Manual. You are invited to join my Perl Bitcoin Toolchain Collective organization on GitHub. If you like my work, you may also consider supporting me.
Comments? Suggestions? Send to feedback@bbrtj.eu
Published on 2024-09-20