Bitcoin BIP will add five new editors, what impact will it have on the development of the ecosystem?

Original Author | CoinDesk

Compile | Odaily Planet Daily Nanfang

Bitcoin’s open source development is often hailed as a major advantage, demonstrating the network’s resilience and hard-to-capture characteristics. But a closer look reveals that something as complex as developing, updating, and patching blockchains in real-time is often challenging.

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

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

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

• Bitcoin developer and co-founder of Custodia Bank, Bryan Bishop;
• bitdevs.org mailing list co-hosts Murch and Ruben Somsen;
• Olaoluwa Osuntokun, CTO, Lightning Labs;
• Bitcoin Core contributor Jonatack.

What is the problem caused by only one BIP editor?

The workload is too high

“The problem is that Luke is the only BIP editor, which means he’s the only person who can merge content into a BIP repository, which covers everything from small to large, and as a result, Luke doesn’t have time to deal with that,” Chow said in an interview with CoinDesk. ”

(Odaily Note: A repository is a repository in a version control system that stores project code, documents, and other resources.) It is a collection that contains all the files of the project and their history. ）

"I think what he did was what he thought was best for Bitcoin and what he thought was the most Decentralization and the most beneficial for the coin as a whole, and BIP editing was a rarely seen aspect of the development process, which included everything from fixing typos in the proposal to assessing whether it should be a BIP, assigning numbers, and providing detailed feedback. The final step is to merge the BIP into a GitHub repository. Chow acknowledged Luke Dashjr’s long contributions over long years. In addition to regularly contributing to Bitcoin Core, Dashjr also serves as the CTO of Ocean Mining.

Chow further explains, "One of the biggest problems is that Luke will comment, for example, saying that the author needs to fix an issue, and then the author will fix it within a few hours. But then we don’t see Luke’s response to that PR again for another month or two. ”

Previously, Luke had a single decision

The first BIP proposal (BIP 0001), presented by early Bitcoin developer Amir Taaki in August 2011, introduced a process for submitting improvement proposals, which has been more formalized for longing years but has not run particularly smoothly. Bitcoin Core almost never commits BIPs, and they tend to focus on improving consensus, wallets, private key management, or new types of transactions, as Chow puts it.

“The line between what is BIP and what isn’t BIP is a bit blurred, and proposals like Ordinals, Colored Coins and Taproot Assets, which all introduce new ways to use Bitcoin, but maybe don’t officially change protocol,” Chow said. “

Essentially, it’s up to the editor to decide what qualifies as a BIP, and Chow believes the process can be made more efficient by adding longest voices from different backgrounds. While much of the discussion may still be out of the public eye, a more long debate may help to better define the criteria for a successful proposal. The editorial nomination process started in January and can be said to be going fairly smoothly by Bitcoin standards.

Battle of Luke vs. Ordinals

In fact, Luke Dashjr is known longest for his previous plans to “block” the Ordinals protocol. On December 23, Luke Dashjr stated: “The inscription is using a vulnerability in Bitcoin Core to spam the Blockchain. Since 2013, Bitcoin Core has allowed users to set limits on the size of extra data in their queues or mined transactions. By obfuscating their data into program code, the inscription bypasses this limitation in the hope that it will finally be fixed before next year’s v2 7 release.”

At that time, ORDI falls from a low of about 65 USDT to 41 USDT, and the proposal was finally rejected in January '24.

Editor’s role and voice in Bitcoin code changes

For a piece of code to be incorporated into Bitcoin’s codebase, it requires a series of rigorous processes to ensure proposal quality and community consensus, typically consisting of 7 steps: writing the proposal and code, community discussion, modification and improvement, voting for consensus, code implementation, merging into the codebase, deployment, and activation.

It can be seen that editors are more focused on the front end of the process, and the long of editors can introduce more long possibilities for the change of Bitcoin, but the final realization still requires the consensus of longer forces such as the community, Miner, and code merge rights holders.

The new wave of Bitcoin is coming, and the proposal is timely

In the Blockchain world, where “move fast, break the mold” and “test in production” are the norm, Bitcoin development can be seen as relatively slow. For example, Taproot, the last major full-scale protocol upgrade, was launched three years ago and went live longest after longest years of research and development.

That has all changed since the introduction of Casey Rodamor’s Ordinals protocol last year. On an on-chain that has been trying to resist the “Degen” side of the broader encryption market for more than longing, it ignites a whole new meme culture. Therefore, it can be considered that this is the perfect time to join new BIP edits.

While some took advantage of yesterday’s nomination moment to taunt, tweeting OP_CAT calling it a new way to introduce smart contracts on Bitcoin to build more complex applications, with BIP number 420 assigned. The joke really helps to shed light on the tension and human conflict that exists in a topic that is essentially a regulatory proposal.

While some used yesterday’s nomination moment as an opportunity to spoof and tweet OP_CAT – a new way to introduce smart contracts on Bitcoin to build more complex applications – was assigned BIP number 420. This parody illustrates the tensions and human conflicts inherent in proposal review.

(Odaily’s note: OP_CAT was actually removed (disabled) by the Satoshi Nakamoto in 2010 and no BIP number has been assigned yet.) ）

For example, **Dashjr is an open opponent of OP_CAT and Ordinals, and some argue that he unjustly blocked the approval of their respective proposals. **Chow said that although she has a more “relaxed view” of what should be considered a BIP, she doesn’t think Ordinals (which she calls “a little stupid”) are not up to par, but she won’t be unscrupulous about opposing it.

A more long edit can mean a more long BIP being 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’s full of strong personalities who hold strong views.