Experts will meet to study and discuss the next Bitcoin update in the next few days. The community knows little about BIP-119, but its developer believes that may change.
Developers and experts will meet virtually to study and discuss the next Bitcoin upgrade. They will hold those debates every two weeks starting January 11th.
The objective of Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 119 (BIP-119) is to implement commands that facilitate the automation of transactions. The developers of that update took into account parameters such as time, similarly to the concept of smart contracts.
On December 24th, Jeremy Rubin, developer of BIP-119, explained the activation path of the upgrade. In addition, he noted that it is a soft fork, so it will not cause breaks in the Bitcoin consensus.
Implementing the OP_CheckTemplateVerify (OP_CTV) command would allow a higher number of transactions with less effort and cost. Besides, it would help create vaults of bitcoins available when a specified requirement is complete for settlements, contracts, and family inheritances.
Rubin said that the doubts and suggestions coming from the community would serve as inputs for the discussion. He explained that the experts would review, test, and reinforce any doubts about the timing and procedures of the proposed roadmap.
Likewise, he clarified that those meetings do not imply the automatic approval of BIP-119 or the proposed roadmap. He stated that the idea is to reach consensus gradually, interactively, and in the most productive way possible.
The Community Participates in the Improvement and Development of Bitcoin
Not only developers and experts but also the community are crucial to improving the Bitcoin network. Jeremy Rubin pointed out that the latter can contribute their ideas and doubts through Libera, channel ## ctv-bip-review.
The developer of BIP-119 said that the entire community could freely participate in the activation processes for Bitcoin updates. However, he pointed out that they do not need to have an active node or be frequent users of the protocol and its cryptocurrency.
In recent days, participants from the ecosystem offered 3.6 BTC to those who found flaws in BIP-119. It is important to note that the developers have worked on that proposal for several years.
Rubin clarified that there would also be a challenge and award structure different from the winner takes it all. With that, they would avoid encouraging the community to find minor adjustments necessary to solve rather than a single big bug.
There is an increasing number of users on the Bitcoin network, so there must be adjustments in BIP-119. On certain occasions, users have complained that the blockchain is congested and the fees are too high. Discussion by experts and developers along with the community will make that possible.
Bitcoin is currently trading at around USD 42,201 and has accumulated a 0.8% loss in the last 24 hours. Its daily trading volume is above USD 23.69 billion, and its market capitalization is about USD 798.61 billion, according to CoinGecko.
By Alexander Salazar
