Note: This email is an opinion and not an attack on bitcoin Covenants on bitcoin will eventually be implemented with a soft fork. CTV is the easiest and best possible way OP_TX looks good as well. Apart from the technical merits, covenants will improve a few other things:
- Developers can build interesting projects with real demand in market. - Students learn Sapio and not just solidity. - Better tooling could be available for application developers. - Maybe we see bitcoin developer hackathons in different countries. - Demand for block space might increase, it wont be just exchanges and coinjoin. - Funding of bitcoin developers and projects might improve. Wont need to convince a few people for grants. **Why covenants are not contentious?** Some people may write paragraphs about CTV being contentious, spread misinformation and do all types of drama, politics etc. on social media but there are zero technical NACKs for CTV. We have discussed other covenant proposals in detail on mailing list and IRC meetings with an open minded approach. All the developers that participated in the discussion are either okay with CTV or OP_TX or covenants in general. **How and when should covenants be implemented in Bitcoin?** I don't think we should wait for years anticipating a proposal that everyone will agree on or argue for years to pretend changes are hard in Bitcoin. We should improve the review process for soft fork BIPs and share honest opinions with agreement, disagreement on technical merits. I prefer BIP 8 or improved BIP 8 for soft fork but I won't mind anything else being used if that improves Bitcoin. Covenants implemented in Bitcoin before the next cycle would provide opportunity for developers to build interesting things during the bear market. Ossification supporters also believe there is some window that will close soon, maybe doing changes considering each case individually will be a better approach. CTV is not a rushed soft fork, less people followed the research and it was not mentioned on social media repeatedly by the respected developers like other soft forks. /dev/fd0 Sent with Proton Mail secure email. _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
