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Bitcoin BIP will add five new editors. What impact will this have on future development?

Bitcoin BIP will add five new editors. What impact will this have on future development?

BlockBeats-Article2024/04/24 06:54
By:BlockBeats-Article
Original title: Will Bitcoin's New BIP Editors Streamline Development?
Original source: CoinDesk
Original translation: Nan Zhi, Odaily Planet Daily


Bitcoin's open source development is often hailed as one of its major advantages, demonstrating the network's resilience and elusive nature. But a closer look reveals that complex things such as real-time development, updating and patching the blockchain often face challenges.


One of the main problems in the past few years has been the bottleneck in editing BIPs (Bitcoin Improvement Proposals), which is a standard for proposing non-binding software updates that will change the Bitcoin protocol in some way.


That's about to change as the globally distributed Bitcoin development community has decided to nominate five new BIP editors. This is the first time in Bitcoin's history that more than one person has held the position, a role that has been held solely by controversial Bitcoin OG Luke Dashjr for the past decade.


Bitcoin Core developer Ava Chow led the nomination process, nominating five new editors:


· Bryan Bishop, bitcoin developer and co-founder of Custodia bank;

· Murch and Ruben Somsen, co-moderators of the bitdevs.org mailing list;

· Olaoluwa Osuntokun, CTO of Lightning Labs;

· Jonatack, Bitcoin Core contributor.


What problems does having only one BIP editor cause?


Too much workload


Chow told CoinDesk: "The problem is that Luke is the only BIP editor, which means he is the only one who can merge content into the BIP repository, which covers all work from small to large, and the result is that Luke doesn't have time to deal with this."


(Odaily Note: repository refers to a repository in a version control system used to store project code, documents and other resources. It is a collection of all files of a project and its history.)


"I think what he did was what he thought was best for Bitcoin, and what he thought was most decentralized and best for the entire currency. BIP editing is an aspect of the development process that is rarely seen. It includes everything from correcting spelling errors in proposals to evaluating whether it should become a BIP, assigning numbers, and providing detailed feedback. The last step is to merge the BIP into the GitHub repository." Chow affirmed Luke Dashjr's many contributions over the years. In addition to regularly contributing to Bitcoin Core, Dashjr also serves as the CTO of Ocean Mining.


Chow further explained: “One of the biggest issues is that Luke will comment, for example, that the author needs to fix something, and the author will fix it within a few hours. But then we won’t see Luke respond to that PR for another month or two.”


Previously, Luke had sole decision-making power


The first BIP proposal (BIP 0001), proposed by early Bitcoin developer Amir Taaki in August 2011, introduced a process for submitting improvement proposals, which has become more formalized over the years, but it also doesn’t run particularly smoothly. Bitcoin Core almost never submits BIPs, which tend to focus on improving consensus, wallets, private key management, or, as Chow said, new types of transactions.


The line between what is a BIP and what is not a BIP is a little blurry, Chow said, with proposals like Ordinals, Colored Coins, and Taproot Assets all introducing new ways to use Bitcoin but perhaps not formally changing the protocol.


Essentially, what meets the criteria to become a BIP is determined by the editors, a process Chow believes could be made more efficient by adding more voices from different backgrounds. While much of the discussion will likely still take place out of the public eye, more debate could help better define the criteria for a successful proposal. The editor nomination process launched in January and has gone fairly smoothly by Bitcoin standards.


Luke vs. Ordinals


In fact, Luke Dashjr is better known for his previous plans to "kill" the Ordinals protocol. In December 2023, Luke Dashjr said: "Inscriptions are exploiting a vulnerability in Bitcoin Core to send spam to the blockchain. Since 2013, Bitcoin Core has allowed users to set limits on the size of additional data in their queues or mined transactions. By obfuscating their data as program code, Inscriptions bypassed this limit, and hopefully it will be fixed before v2 7 next year."


Due to this controversy at the time, ORDI once fell from about 65 USDT to a minimum of 41 USDT, and the proposal was ultimately rejected in January 2024.


The role and voice of editors in Bitcoin code changes


For a piece of code to be merged into the Bitcoin code base, a series of rigorous processes are required to ensure the quality of the proposal and community consensus, which usually includes 7 major steps: writing proposals and code, community discussion, modification and improvement, voting to reach consensus, code implementation, merging into the code base, deployment and activation.


It can be seen that editors are more focused on the front end of the process. The increase in editors can introduce more possibilities for Bitcoin's transformation, but the final implementation still requires the community, miners, code merging rights holders and other forces to reach a consensus.


A new wave of Bitcoin is coming, and it is time to propose


In the blockchain world, "moving fast and breaking the rules" and "testing in production" are the normal modes, and Bitcoin development can be regarded as relatively slow. For example, the last major comprehensive protocol upgrade Taproot was launched three years ago and was officially launched after years of research and development.


Since the introduction of Casey Rodamor's Ordinals protocol last year, all this has changed. On a chain that has spent years trying to resist the “degen” aspects of the wider crypto market, it’s ignited a whole new meme culture. So it could be argued that this is the perfect time to get on board with a new BIP editor.


While some used yesterday’s nomination moment as an opportunity for a spoof, tweeting that OP_CAT — a new way to introduce smart contracts on Bitcoin to build more complex applications — was assigned the BIP number 420. The joke does help illuminate the tensions and human conflicts that exist in what is essentially a regulatory proposal.


While some used yesterday’s nomination moment as an opportunity for a spoof, tweeting that OP_CAT — a new way to introduce smart contracts on Bitcoin to build more complex applications — was assigned the BIP number 420. The spoof does help illuminate the tensions and human conflicts that exist in what is essentially a regulatory proposal.


(Odaily Note: In fact, OP_CAT was removed (disabled) by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2010 and has not yet been assigned a BIP number.)


For example, **Dashjr is a public opponent of OP_CAT and Ordinals, and some believe that he unfairly blocked the approval of their respective proposals. **Chow said that although she has a more "relaxed view" on what should be considered a BIP, she believes that Ordinals (which she called "a bit stupid") does not meet the standards, but she will not oppose it out of hand.


More editors may mean more BIPs are approved and merged, after all, the ultimate goal of the proposal is efficiency. But Bitcoin may always be more interested in debate than speed because it is full of strong personalities with strong opinions.


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Disclaimer: The content of this article solely reflects the author's opinion and does not represent the platform in any capacity. This article is not intended to serve as a reference for making investment decisions.

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