Stumbling into a contentious soft fork activation attempt

Summary:

The conversation revolves around the topic of soft forks in Bitcoin, specifically the proposal for enabling covenants with OP_CTV. One person argues that there would be no short-term damages to implementing this soft fork since it has been discussed for years, documented properly, and recently received crowdfunding to incentivize its review process and improve security.Prayank is an active participant in the discussion and is currently reviewing pull request 21702 and creating contracts using Sapio for OP_CTV. He has also been involved with Bitcoin Knots and zkSNACKs Wasabi. Prayank responds to questions about his involvement in OP_CTV and the use of Sapio as a programming language. He acknowledges the need for multiple programming languages and states that he is not against Miniscript but is waiting for its support in Core. Prayank also states that he has dedicated enough time to reading everything related to OP_CTV and discussing things posted by Jeremy Rubin.Michael Folkson expresses skepticism about rushing through the implementation of covenants without sufficient research. He questions Prayank's assessment of OP_CTV being ready to go in a few months, stating that more work needs to be done to ensure the utility and safety of the opcode. Michael encourages Prayank to dig deeper and engage with skeptics on technical concerns before indicating support for an imminent activation attempt. Michael points out that if an activation attempt were made this year, it would likely be contentious.The lack of work on the speculated use cases of OP_CTV is discussed, and it is contrasted with the development of eltoo payment channels. The conversation ends with a call to bring attention to the danger of stumbling into a contentious soft fork activation attempt, while others argue that the danger lies in a few people stopping soft forks that could improve Bitcoin due to their biases and non-technical opinions.For those interested in engaging with skeptics on technical concerns, the IRC workshops on BIP 119 are recommended.

Updated on: 2023-06-15T04:20:22.341461+00:00