In a conversation that I had with Christian Decker Shinobi, Bitcoin Magazine’s Shinobi, delved deep into the politics behind Bitcoin development. Decker, the lead Lightning developer at Blockstream, gave a candid view of today’s competitive environment, where many developers are more concerned with political issues than technical matters.
Decker didn’t mince words in describing the problems developers are facing. “We have been trying way too long to be clever in as much that we try to sidestep the discussion of whether we want covenants, what kind of covenants we want, or introspection, as we like to call it,” he added. He said that the cleverness of the community has resulted in fragmented initiatives, where narrowly-focused proposals struggle to gain traction amid limited review cycles and fierce competition.
To a new perspective
Decker said that the environment of combative developers is a serious problem. “badmouth other proposals in order for your proposal to grab the attention that is needed to get your proposal through.” The tension is unnecessary. Rusty Russell recent proposalHowever, it offers a refreshing alternative. It is designed to bring back the original scripting features of Bitcoin, allowing for a more collaborative and unified approach.
Decker stressed the importance of including the wider Bitcoin community in the discussions. “If it’s just seriously discussed, I think that can be an incredibly healthy thing for the larger and wider ecosystem’s involvement,” He said. It is possible to create a healthy ecosystem by taking a collaborative approach, where all participants openly discuss potential advantages and disadvantages. The idea is to make it more difficult for people dismissing ideas because of their superficial association. This encourages a transparent and honest dialogue.
This proposal is to return Bitcoin script’s original functionality. “giving everybody the tools to build whatever they want” Decker believes that this approach will lead to more meaningful and efficient optimizations over time, without being restricted. Decker thinks this approach will eventually lead to better and more effective optimizations. “It might be inefficient the way that you can do arbitrary things, but you can at least show your work and you can show it works,” He explained. Once the solutions have been demonstrated, it will be natural for everyone to work together in order to improve and optimize performance.
Shinobi and Decker both agreed that subject matter experts should be consulted in technical discussions. But they both stressed that these experts must present an unbiased view of the pros and con of their proposal. Decker has pointed out how the current climate often encourages experts to portray a distorted picture. This can be misleading for the community. “In Bitcoin, until now, you always had to be very loud, you had to be very salesy, and you always had to present this, this is the upside of mine, but there’s the downsides of everybody else,” He said. The competitive environment has hampered honest and transparent discussion.
Engineering first
Rusty’s proposal marks a major shift in how the Bitcoin development community views script enhancements. The community will be able to shift away from politics and move towards an innovative and collaborative future by reenabling the scripts’ original functionality. Decker says, “Let’s approach this as engineers, which is what most of us are, and not as propagandists or salespeople trying to sort of just get your stuff done.”
This discussion sheds some light on ongoing efforts to enhance Bitcoin’s scripting abilities and highlights the importance of honest dialogue and cooperation in order to reach these goals. Rusty’s proposals are a great way to enable more flexible, programmable currency on the Bitcoin Network as the Bitcoin Community continues to develop.
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Source: bitcoinmagazine.com