sipa's secp256k1, optimized ecdsa, significantly faster than openssl
Today someone in #bitcoin-dev asked for Bitcoin 0.8.5 with sipa's secp256k1. Litecoin has been shipping test builds with secp256k1 for several months now so it was a simple matter to throw together a branch of Bitcoin 0.8.5 with secp256k1.
https://github.com/wtogami/bitcoin/commits/btc-0.8.5-secp256k1This branch should theoretically work for Linux, win32 gitian and mac builds. These commits are rather ugly because it was thrown together just to make it build with the old 0.8 makefiles without intent for production code merge. cfields is working on autotoolizing it as one of the prerequisites prior to inclusion into bitcoin master where it will be an option disabled by default.
Untested win32 gitian build. Build your own Linux or Mac builds if you want to test it. Not recommended for production wallet or mining uses.
Warren