msgilligan
M. Sean Gilligan

Developer at bitcoinj.org, ConsensusJ

Public Key

npub1msg0cus9n2c3emex0rxm2vrtzqyl6tk32jt9wfvnprkny04jke0q22tv6z

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsdcy8uwgze4vguaun83nd4xp43qz0a9mg4f9jhykfs3mfj86etvhspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds4nvtsj

Publishing to

nostr.mom

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1msg0cus9n2c3emex0rxm2vrtzqyl6tk32jt9wfvnprkny04jke0q22tv6z

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Last Notes

2026-02-19 21:10:25 UTC

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Well (from what I’ve read so far) it’s not an arrest for any sexual offense, so I don’t know if the counter gets to go to 0001 yet. But it’s a step in the right direction.

2026-02-19 20:39:24 UTC

https://image.nostr.build/4189152cd6cfa5e2bfa26fb6af3eccb48d599d3d2fccd0d95a6df68de9c33dab.jpg

2026-01-23 19:52:13 UTC

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Now I’m tempted to write a NIP…

2026-01-23 19:51:36 UTC

“AI is a horse” is reasonably accurate, very humorous, and Haiku-like in its brevity.
https://kconner.com/2024/08/02/ai-is-a-horse.html
(via Hacker News)

2026-01-23 15:44:11 UTC

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Is that “outbox model” specified in a NIP?

2026-01-23 15:42:32 UTC

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True, but that is a separate issue and there are various mechanisms that can be used to verify that a single recent note was received.

2026-01-23 03:00:54 UTC

On Nostr, for a public key that I subscribe to, how can I verify that my relays aren’t filtering out messages from that key? Is there a merkle hash on your latest note that I can use to verify that your previous notes were all received?

2025-12-23 15:20:01 UTC

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To be clear bitcoinj released a fix for this issue 11 months ago in version 0.16.5.

2025-11-27 18:30:32 UTC

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I doubt they’ve given it much thought. They’re probably just amplifying criticism they’ve heard from within the Bitcoin community.

2025-11-20 22:12:38 UTC

Nice interview of @npub1hea…g9v2 about Sparrow Wallet on JavaFX in Action. Frank Delporte asks good questions about reproducible builds, JavaFX, etc and also gets an introduction to Bitcoin using the Sparrow UI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc3fUTxoKIg

2025-11-14 22:46:15 UTC

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And you must mean MessageDigest and NoSuchAlgorithmException. Ai yai, I thought I tested that.

2025-11-14 22:44:04 UTC

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Oh, I see one mistake 🤦‍♂️. Yeah, that script requires JDK 25+.

2025-11-14 22:38:57 UTC

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In the JBang script? You change from Java 17 to what version? And I wouldn’t think the `import` statement would have to change? I must be missing something.

2025-11-14 22:30:41 UTC

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What did you have to tweak? I thought I had tested everything.

2025-11-11 18:22:15 UTC

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Thanks!

2025-11-11 13:50:25 UTC

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Hi!

2025-11-07 22:20:24 UTC

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There’s a Nostr workshop in Santa Cruz this month. I’ll probably do it there…

2025-11-07 21:57:47 UTC

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Assuming, of course, that you are running Nix.

2025-11-07 21:54:44 UTC

Getting started with secp256k1-jdk in a note!
#note13lh…u5kk

2025-11-07 21:52:34 UTC

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To run the Schnorr Signature example with JVM:
nix run github:msgilligan/secp256k1-jdk-flake#secp256k1-jdk
To run it the natively-compiled version:
nix run github:msgilligan/secp256k1-jdk-flake#secp256k1-jdk-native
If you want to play with source, do:
nix shell nixpkgs#jbang
enter the below code into a file named SecpEcdsa.java and then `jbang SecpEcdsa.java`.
(Schnorr sig is little trickier to run in JBang because you need libsecp256k installed, but the flakes above handle it.)
——
///usr/bin/env jbang "$0" "$@" ; exit $?
//JAVA 17+
//REPOS mavencentral, secpjdk=https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/55956336/packages/maven
//DEPS org.bitcoinj.secp:secp-bouncy:0.2
import org.bitcoinj.secp.*;
byte[] message = sha256("Hello World!");
void main() {
IO.println("secp256k1-jdk ECDSA Sample");
try (Secp256k1 secp = Secp256k1.getById("bouncy-castle")) {
var pair = secp.ecKeyPairCreate();
var sig = secp.ecdsaSign(message, pair).get();
var isValid = secp.ecdsaVerify(sig, message, pair.publicKey()).get();
IO.println("Valid ECDSA signature = " + isValid);
}
}
byte[] sha256(String message) {
try {
return MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA-256").digest(message.getBytes());
} catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e); // Can't happen.
}
}
——

2025-11-07 15:56:09 UTC

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The best tech is usable tech!

2025-11-06 09:24:12 UTC

secp256k1-jdk is a modern, functional-style Java API with two implementations for Java, JDK, GraalVM native-image, Kotlin, Scala, etc.
It aims to be the standard library for secp256k1 in the greater JDK/JVM Bitcoin ecosystem.
Thanks to Andreas Schildbach and @npub1hea…g9v2 for their help!
Version 0.2 is now available for early integration testing.
Binaries are available in a GitLab Maven repo, but remember: "Don't trust. Verify." This is an experimental pre-release.
https://github.com/bitcoinj/secp256k1-jdk/releases/tag/v0.2

2025-11-06 07:57:14 UTC

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Next week!

2025-11-06 07:54:48 UTC

Status report
https://image.nostr.build/88430f5c36ecbf05dcf4dd01a0fdc0f01c263eb61ca54c7f2ddc29550c28e2ce.jpg

2025-11-06 07:53:48 UTC

@npub18pu…a699
https://image.nostr.build/0a95c14bb5c9c89dd8551cc5330020e3b4bdb9ea59983e6c9e1d9a77aa1ac8e8.gif

2025-11-06 07:50:06 UTC

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Yeah, haven’t done the Zap thing yet. I’ll set it up eventually. Should be fun! But I’m on a “mission from Satoshi” right now and focused on other things.

2025-11-06 07:30:02 UTC

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Cool. I will post some instructions for you soon.

2025-11-06 07:25:58 UTC

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Does that 💯 mean that you can easily run `nix shell` with the latest `nixpkgs-unstable`?

2025-11-06 07:12:29 UTC

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I’m a big fan of using Nix as a package manger (and via Home Manager) on Debian and macOS (aka Darwin) You don’t need to use NixOS — although I do that, too.

2025-11-06 07:06:20 UTC

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Do you use Nix?

2025-11-06 06:32:37 UTC

Lurking for 2 years...
#note1ntk…pepf

2025-11-06 06:31:38 UTC

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The warning that @npub185h…wrdp wrote on some of the bitcoinj consensus code is one of the most frightening warning comments I have ever seen! There is nothing remotely comparable to libbitcoinkernel to replace.
I knew that 10 years ago when I was messing around with this:
https://github.com/msgilligan/java-libbitcoinconsensus

2025-11-06 06:25:21 UTC

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let x = (x - 5) / 10

2025-11-06 06:23:37 UTC

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I’m including myself in the list of “a few Java developers” 😁
There are many things we can do with it. And the new FFM (aka “Panama”) stuff is really nice. Have you looked at secp2565k1-jdk?

2025-11-06 05:56:40 UTC

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I know a few Java developers who are very excited about this…

2025-11-06 05:11:15 UTC

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@npub18pu…a699

2025-11-06 05:10:40 UTC

I really need to start posting here.

2025-10-22 04:45:27 UTC

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Almost as criminal as when U.S. coins switched from Lady Liberty to dead presidents…

2025-06-10 00:13:47 UTC

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To be fair, I’m less knowledgeable about AI than I should be and one of my goals for this year is to better learn tools for refactoring/improving existing apps. But “vibe code” at the lower-layers or multiple layers of vibe code sounds risky to me. AI should be held to (at least) the same standards as human developers.

2025-01-21 08:14:51 UTC

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I think we need to be realistic:
I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office.
Milton Friedman
(and even this is a tall order)

2024-11-06 22:37:51 UTC

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I don’t think California was a Republican state (even when Reagan was governor) but the decline to single-party rule has indeed been tragic.

2024-08-31 01:32:23 UTC

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Visiting Alcatraz is probably one of the best tourist-y things to do.

2024-03-16 17:13:54 UTC

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Sparrow in Debian will be hard because it uses Gradle for its build and getting a DFSG-compatible build of Gradle is very difficult.

2024-01-03 05:16:04 UTC

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15 years later and nobody’s eating out for £5! (or anywhere near $5)