The Bitcoin Optech newsletter provides readers with a top-level summary of the most important technical news happening in Bitcoin, along with resources that help them learn more. To help our readers stay up-to-date with Bitcoin, we’re republishing the latest issue of this newsletter below. Remember to subscribe to receive this content straight to your inbox.
This week’s newsletter summarizes continued discussion about proposed methods for activating taproot and links to an effort to document existing software building on top of taproot. Also included are our regular sections with the summary of a Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting, announcements of releases and release candidates, and descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects.
News
- Taproot activation discussion: the previous weeks’ discussions about activation saw different groups of people opposing either BIP8
LockinOnTimeout=true(LOT=true) orLOT=false, so most discussion on the mailing list this week focused on alternative activation mechanisms. Some proposals included:- User Activated Soft Fork (UASF): a plan being discussed to implement BIP8
LOT=truein a software fork of Bitcoin Core that mandates miners signal for activation of taproot by July 2022 (as widely proposed), but which also allows miners to activate it earlier. - Flag day: several proposals (1, 2) to program into nodes a specific block height or time roughly 18 months from now (as proposed) where taproot activates. Miner signaling is not required to cause activation and cannot cause earlier activation. Anthony Towns wrote a draft implementation.
- Decreasing threshold: several proposals (1, 2) to gradually decrease over time the number of blocks that must signal readiness for miners to enforce taproot before the new consensus rules lock in. See also Anthony Town’s proposal from last year described in Newsletter #107.
- A configurable LOT: in addition to previously-discussed proposals to make BIP8’s
LOTvalue a…
- User Activated Soft Fork (UASF): a plan being discussed to implement BIP8
