On a new community process to specify covenants

Summary:

Antoine Riard and Billy Tetrud proposed a decision-making process for investigating the problem and solution spaces of covenants in Bitcoin FOSS. The process involves multiple phases and iterations to reach a consensus, aiming to provide a detailed understanding of the thought process behind each decision. The group discussed a list of six phases, which include defining phases, prioritizing motivations, defining and prioritizing constraints, evaluating proposals based on criteria, and producing conclusions on which proposals are worth pursuing further. Each phase would consist of discussing individual items sequentially, and the consensus reached at the end of each phase would be considered as a group consensus.The results of each phase would be published for broader community feedback, including detailed evaluations of each proposal by various individuals. The group can revisit any previous phase, which would solidify consensus more about each phase. The iteration would loop through phases 2, 3, and 4 several times, and it might be likely that in phase 5, people realize that additional criteria should be added, proposing to go back to step 4.The group aims to narrow down the set of proposals worth pursuing ideally to one or two by looping through phases 5 and 6 until a relatively solid consensus is achieved. Antoine noted that seeking lack of consensus would be more interesting than group consensus, and proposals should be reevaluated regularly in the function of new feedback.In response to Antoine Riard's query on defining capabilities in the Bitcoin context, Bram Cohen provides examples such as payments into vaults that can only be accepted by that vault and subject to its restrictions, oracles whose validity can be verified on-chain, and colored coins whose validity can also be verified on-chain. The definition of capabilities in the Bitcoin context seems to revolve around the ability to ensure the authenticity and security of transactions and assets on the blockchain.During the discussion, Billy Tetrud suggested using IRC for meetings and organizing in-person meetups every few meetings to facilitate communication. Antoine noted that it would be hard work to organize in-person meetings, but he believes that the covenant problem space could be solved in an evolutionary way, layer by layer, akin to how LN moves forward.

Updated on: 2023-06-15T23:06:15.239621+00:00