Podcasts: Bitcoin Tech #5 - Bitcoin Consensus with Shinobi 🔗 3 years ago

“I cannot stress this enough; when you are trying to gauge consensus for an upgrade proposal, it is not a democracy. Absolutely not. It is not voting; it is not majority wins. That is not how things are done.”
— Shinobi

Location: Miami
Date: Tuesday 25th May
Project: Block Digest
Role: Host

Bitcoin is an entirely decentralised network, and as such, by definition, it has no authoritative organisation to dictate or coordinate rule changes. Instead, any improvements or changes must be community-driven.

Changes to Bitcoin are rare, and when the developers propose protocol changes, they go through a strenuous review and test process. As such, changes are rare and slow to happen. While some see this as a negative, it is one of the strengths of Bitcoin. 

A monetary network that is worth nearly $1tn should not be fast or easy to change. Many even think that eventually, the base-layer of Bitcoin may reach a point where it must no longer implement any changes, and further improvements would occur on higher layers.

In this interview, I talk to Shinobi, the host of Block Digest. We discuss making changes to the Bitcoin protocol, hard vs soft forks, ossification, and the upcoming Taproot soft fork means for Bitcoin.

This episode’s sponsors:
Gemini - Buy Bitcoin instantly
BlockFi - The future of Bitcoin financial services
Sportsbet.io - Online sportsbook & casino that accepts Bitcoin
Casa - The leading provider of Bitcoin multisig key security.
Exodus- The world's leading Desktop, Mobile and Hardware crypto wallets.
Ledger- State of the art Bitcoin hardware wallet
Revolut- A better way to handle your money

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WBD357 - Show Notes

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