Author: Keagan McClelland 2023-07-19 18:29:24+00:00
Published on: 2023-07-19T18:29:24+00:00
In an email exchange on the Bitcoin-dev mailing list, Keags expresses his agreement with Antoine that a smoothly functioning Lightning Network (LN) is more important than advanced contracting capabilities. However, he also mentions that as he delves deeper into LN development, he realizes that some of the complexity in current LN proposals can be simplified with CTV (Covenant Transaction Verification). Keags suspects that other covenant schemes may also be capable of reducing complexity. He encourages others to confirm this claim.Keags goes on to state that he has long supported the addition of a covenant scheme into Bitcoin, believing it is necessary for the long-term survival of the cryptocurrency. Working directly with the Lightning protocol has made these arguments more concrete and beneficial. He challenges the idea that covenants are a distraction from LN development, emphasizing that they can significantly contribute to LN's maturity.Although Keags does not comment on when or how covenants should be prioritized, he emphasizes that Lightning would benefit from having a covenant primitive. He acknowledges that Antoine's focus on LN may prevent him from splitting his attention, but he wants observers to understand that covenants and LN are not independent efforts.Antoine's email, which prompted Keags' response, announces the conclusion of his experiment regarding covenant specifications. He explains that the goals of the experiment were to build a consistent framework for evaluating covenant proposals, identify common grounds between proposals, open up the consensus changes development process beyond Bitcoin Core, and maintain a high-quality technical archive. Antoine highlights related initiatives undertaken by others, such as the bitcoin-inquisition fork and the archiving of covenant proposals under the Optech umbrella.Antoine provides an update on the Bitcoin Contracting Primitives WG, stating that a Github repository was created to document and archive various primitives and protocols related to Bitcoin contracts. Monthly meetings were held with attendees from different parts of the community, and in-depth discussions took place on topics like "merkelized all the things" and "payment pools for miners payoffs". However, Antoine admits that he has not run an online meeting since April due to his focus on Lightning robustness.Antoine expresses his belief that the smooth functioning of LN with 50-100M UTXO-sharing users is more critical for Bitcoin's survival than extended covenant capabilities. He acknowledges that small incremental changes to Bitcoin Script can have a significant impact, citing Taproot and Schnorr as examples. Antoine plans to continue working on CoinPool, addressing issues like interactivity and withdrawal compression, as well as exploring advanced Bitcoin contracts based on the taproot annex. He also mentions the possibility of submitting security reviews of consensus changes under pseudonyms.In conclusion, Antoine reflects on the state of Bitcoin's technological momentum and suggests that what it lacks is a small group of technical historians and archivists to assess and preserve consensus change proposals. He invites anyone interested in maintaining and nurturing the Bitcoin Contracting Primitives WG to reach out. Antoine believes there are compelling technical proposals to advance Bitcoin's capabilities but emphasizes the need for rigorous testing and adherence to decentralization and FOSS neutrality standards.
Updated on: 2023-07-22T02:06:42.090649+00:00