It's been a hoopla-heavy week, so I figured I'd use today's issue to highlight some fundamentals around development and legislation that have crossed my radar over the last few days.

First up, Sidecar from Lighting Labs.

Sidecar is a trust-minimized solution that makes the UX around receiving funds upon being onboarded onto Lightning much smoother. Sidecar leverages Lightning Labs' Pool product to allow a third party, most likely exchanges acting on behalf of users to start out, to purchase channels on behalf of individual users. This product is similar to the dual-funded channels we talked about a few weeks ago. The main difference is that it's a product with a trusted party opening the channel on a user's behalf. Even though it's different and there is a bit of trust added to the mix with this particular setup, I believe the tradeoff makes sense as it will likely be used by exchanges who are looking to add value to their users.

Next up, Texas has passed a law that recognizes bitcoin as a something the citizens of Texas have a right to possess and transact with.

This is beautiful to see and confirms your Uncle Marty's belief that states will lead the way when it comes to the proliferation of Bitcoin in the United States. Shoutout to everyone in the Texas Bitcoin community who took the time to educate the state legislature about Bitcoin and why it is advantageous for the state to embrace the revolutionary digital money.

Last, but not least, Chaincode Labs has announced that they are launching two five-week seminars focused on Bitcoin and Lightning protocol development.

If you are a developer who has been looking for a way to learn more about Bitcoin or Lightning protocol development, I highly recommend you apply to one of the seminars. The Chaincode team is filled with top-notch developers and runs some of the best developer residencies in the world. You'd be learning from some extremely smart and experienced individuals.

Things are looking very bright. Slowly but surely everything is coming together.

Final thought...

I often wonder what these guys is up to these days.