Bitcoin Core update round-up: Core Lightning splicing, upgrades

Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #398 reports no major market-moving news from its sources. The focus is on infrastructure changes that may matter to node operators. Bitcoin Core: a maintenance release, Bitcoin Core 28.4, targets wallet migration fixes and removes an unreliable DNS seed. Key code changes include getblockchaininfo adding a background-validation field for assumeUTXO snapshot users, Tor proof-of-work defenses for auto-created onion services (via HiddenServicePoWDefensesEnabled), and new libbitcoinkernel C API helpers for transaction timelock fields (btck_transaction_get_locktime, btck_transaction_input_get_sequence). Bitcoin Core also intersects with broader Lightning functionality updates across the stack. Core Lightning 26.04rc1 is a release candidate featuring many splicing updates and bug fixes. Core Lightning adds cross-channel and multi-channel splice scripting, plus new splicein/spliceout RPCs to move funds between the internal wallet and channels without manually constructing experimental dev-splice transactions. Other notable items: Eclair introduces optional peer scoring with profit-based auto-funding/auto-close/relay-fee adjustments; LDK fixes a potential funds-loss race during funding/splicing by deferring tx_signatures release until monitor updates complete; LND adds a DeleteAttempts RPC for HTLC attempt record cleanup and improves integration tests with a bitcoind miner backend; and Lightning BOLTs merges the splicing protocol into the main specification with updated flows and edge-case test vectors. Main takeaway for traders: no direct protocol “price signal,” but ongoing node and Lightning performance/security improvements could marginally affect exchange and payment infrastructure reliability.