BOSTON
––
Most
of
the
world
focuses
on
bitcoin
(BTC)’s
zipping
price.
Not
so
for
the
100-odd
bitcoiners
who
gathered
at
Fidelity
Investments’
headquarters
over
the
weekend.
They
were
preoccupied
with
helping
the
original
cryptocurrency
conquer
the
world
–
and
meantime
avoid
getting
wrecked.
-
01:01
Bitcoin
Breaks
$64K
While
Gold
Soars -
00:56
ETH/BTC
Ratio
Slid
to
Lowest
Since
April
2021 -
00:57
Is
Bitcoin
Losing
Its
Bullish
Momentum?
“This
is
about
getting
bitcoin
to
the
next
billion
people,”
said
Will
Foxley,
emcee
of
OP_NEXT,
what
he
claimed
was
the
first
bitcoin
scaling
conference
in
five
years.
OP_NEXT
is
the
newest
anomaly
on
crypto’s
overstuffed
conference
circuit.
It’s
got
none
of
the
retail-friendly
bravado
of
Bitcoin
Nashville.
It
lacks
the
corporate
booths
that
dot
ETH
Denver.
Few
of
its
speakers
shilled
their
crypto-business
ventures,
as
nearly
everyone
did
at
Solana’s
rebooted
Breakpoint.
Instead,
dozens
of
hoodie-wearing
coder
boys
(and
a
handful
of
women)
debated
improvements
that
might
make
bitcoin
more
useful,
usable,
and
even
resilient
against
faraway
problems
that
could
one
day
upend
the
world’s
most
valuable
cryptocurrency.
“Either
we
aggressively
pursue
innovation
and
progress
as
quickly
as
possible
or
we
will
eventually
be
replaced,”
said
Paul
Sztorc
of
bitcoin
developer
company
Layer2
Labs.
Bitcoin
famously
lacks
a
singular
decision-making
authority.
Proposed
upgrades
need
to
find
consensus
among
the
community’s
many
stakeholders,
and
eventually
adoption
by
the
miners
who
run
the
computers
that
run
the
blockchain.
No
one
quite
knows
how
to
know
when
consensus
is
reached.
“I
know
it
when
I
see
it,”
quipped
Colin
Harper,
the
conference
host
as
Blockspace
Media’s
editor-in-chief
(he
and
Foxley
are
former
CoinDesk
reporters).
Soft
forks
The
two
most
recent
soft
forks,
or
backward-compatible
upgrades,
helped
bitcoin
move
beyond
simply
shifting
“digital
gold”
between
wallets.
Nowadays,
network
transactions
are
filled
with
primitive
versions
of
the
wacky
crypto-financial
wizardry
pioneered
on
Ethereum
and
other
smart
contract-centric
blockchains.
Future
soft
forks
could
give
this
kind
of
innovation
a
boost.
While
many
developers
regularly
propose
upgrades,
none
have
succeeded
since
Taproot
was
activated
in
2021,
and
Segwit
in
2017
before
it.
Ossification
is
starting
to
set
in
to
Bitcoin
Core
(the
basic
open-source
software
for
wallets
and
nodes),
some
attendees
said.
Can
bitcoin
continue
to
evolve?
Technically,
of
course.
But
should
it?
”People
got
scared
about
soft
forks
unnecessarily
because
the
last
two
soft
forks
were
large,”
said
Brandon
Black,
engineering
manager
at
Swan
Bitcoin,
a
brokerage
and
custodian.
“We
should
get
in
the
habit”
of
improving
bitcoin.
OP_Next
attendees
were
decidedly
in
favor
of
progress
–
but
not
too
much
progress,
and
certainly
not
too
fast.
When
one
audience
member
shouted
support
for
pushing
regular
software
upgrades
to
Bitcoin
Core,
an
entire
panel
of
bitcoin
developers
scoffed.
One
jokingly
retorted,
“soft
forks
every
day!”
Proposed
soft
forks
percolate
up
from
the
bitcoiner
community.
They
undergo
study
and
debate,
and
if
they
find
sufficient
interest,
get
a
Bitcoin
Improvement
Proposal
(BIP)
number.
From
there,
they
face
more
debates,
security
reviews,
debates,
and
also
debates.
BIPs
that
win
community
consensus
(whatever
that
means)
must
then
be
activated
as
a
soft
fork
–
a
mechanism
that
itself
is
up
for
debate.
Covenants
and
OP_CAT
One
unresolved
debate
is
over
covenants,
a
feature
that
would
allow
bitcoin
holders
to
hard-code
restrictions
into
how
their
BTC
is
spent.
Bitcoin
developer
Jeremy
Rubin
has
long
advocated
for
covenants,
winning
some
fans
and
many
doubters.
In
2021
his
proposal
called
CheckTemplateVerify
received
a
BIP
number.
Then,
amid
the
louder
debate
over
implementing
Taproot,
momentum
for
Rubin’s
covenants
proposal
stalled
out.
“‘Bitcoin
review
is
kind
of
like
the
eye
of
Sauron,’”
Rubin
said
he
heard
from
one
detractor
at
the
time.
“‘It
can
see
everything
but
only
one
thing
at
a
time.’”
By
his
telling,
Rubin
then
declared
himself
“champion
of
Taproot
activation”
in
the
battle
to
get
the
last
successful
soft
fork
over
the
finish
line.
People
simply
couldn’t
“agree
on
consensus,”
he
said.
Taproot
came
online
in
November
2021.
Rubin
“reevaluated
my
life
choices,”
and
quit
the
Bitcoin
Core
developer
team
one
year
later.
A
more
recent
idea
actually
pulls
from
bitcoin’s
deep
past.
BIP-347,
the
OP_CAT
proposal,
would
resurrect
a
function
Satoshi
Nakomoto,
bitcoin’s
pseudonymous
creator,
killed
off
in
2010
due
to
security
concerns.
Nowadays,
the
function
could
allow
people
to
essentially
write
smart
contracts
on
the
network.
Such
a
step
forward
would
put
bitcoin
closer
to
par
with
Ethereum,
its
largest
competitor.
“When
I
talk
to
people
about
CAT,
often
people
will
express
that
they’re
worried
that
other
people
are
opposed
to
CAT,
but
I’ve
met
very
few
people
who
themselves
are
opposed
to
CAT,”
said
the
proposal’s
author,
Ethan
Heilman.
‘Just
don’t
break
it’
Most
bitcoin
investors
“stack
sats”
(slang
for
accumulating)
unbothered
by
debates
over
bitcoin’s
technical
future,
if
they
even
know
those
debates
exist.
Surely
that’s
because
the
vast
majority
only
care
about
its
flashiest
feature:
price.
One
of
Bitcoin
Core’s
current
contributors,
who
goes
by
Portland
HODL,
posed
a
question
to
the
auditorium:
What’s
the
one
thing
every
bitcoin
investor
asks
its
developers
do
for
bitcoin.
Someone
yelled:
“Number
go
up!”
“Yeah!”
shouted
Portland
HODL,
“Just
please
don’t
break
bitcoin
for
me!”
Still,
Portland
HODL
said
he
wanted
bitcoin
future-proofed
against
looming
threats,
like
quantum
computing,
and
the
year
2106
bug,
the
blockchain’s
own
version
of
Y2K.
He
advocated
for
a
janitorial
soft
fork
he
calls
“the
great
consensus
cleanup.”
Portland
HODL
was
less
enthusiastic
about
soft
forks
meant
to
increase
bitcoin’s
core
functionality,
such
as
OP_CAT.
These
things
threaten
bitcoin
with
“unknown
unknowns,”
he
said.
And
by
the
way,
even
as
the
price
soars,
block
space
isn’t
filling
up
to
a
degree
that
would
indicate
the
network
is
hitting
its
limits.
Even
if
developers
could
find
consensus
over
what
upgrades
they’d
like
to
see,
there’s
no
agreement
on
how
to
actually
do
it.
Bitcoin
has
multiple
“activation
mechanisms”
for
soft
forks
and
the
only
thing
people
seem
to
agree
about
is
they
didn’t
like
the
way
that
Taproot
and
SegWit
did
it.
Toward
the
end
of
the
conference,
one
attendee
asked
panelists:
“Who
is
the
decision
maker?”
Everyone
laughed.
