Robin Linus implements the Bitcoin poker protocol with 56,132 transaction tree nodes.

ME News reports that on October 9 (UTC+8), researcher Robin Linus released the Bitcoin Poker protocol, expanding the unfinished poker interface left by Satoshi Nakamoto in Bitcoin’s early code into a fully functional implementation. The protocol enables two players to play Texas Hold’em without a dealer, using Bitcoin’s existing rules to manage card dealing and fund settlement. Bitcoin Poker generates the dealt cards through a joint secret shared by both players, producing only the nine required cards per hand, while ensuring fair dealing via cryptographic commitments and zero-knowledge proofs. The protocol can detect duplicate cards; the probability of randomly generating a valid hand is approximately 48%, requiring an average of 2.08 attempts. The protocol preconstructs a transaction tree for all possible game outcomes, containing 56,132 logical nodes and approximately 8.4 MB of prepared data. Normal gameplay occurs off-chain, with on-chain transactions used solely to resolve disputes in case of cooperation failure. If one party refuses to continue, a timeout mechanism settles the committed pot after a specified delay and returns the departing player’s unused balance, though it cannot force players to reveal their cards. This design requires no modifications to Bitcoin’s consensus rules, supports only two participants, and still requires independent security auditing. (Source: ODAILY)