Caught up in the storm of price action and US politics, it’s easy to forget the Bitcoin technology landscape had its own breakout earlier this year. Now that things have cooled off over the summer, next week’s Open-Source Stage at Bitcoin Nashville is a good opportunity to survey the industry’s progress.
Looking at this agenda, this year’s stacked lineup should be able to provide some signal amidst the electoral chatter. To warm us up for what promises to be an absolute marathon of an event, I’ve highlighted a handful of topics and talks to keep an eye on.
Technical innovation
Bitcoin builders will be looking to pick up on the momentum generated around “Bitcoin Season 2” in Nashville as the focus will remain on efforts to unlock Bitcoin’s programmability.
I previously discussed the arms race over all things BitVM and other purported layer 2s. The level of excitement around Bitcoin script has never been so high. Progress enabled by previous soft forks like Taproot and SegWit has led to various experiments, most motivated by the Ordinals craze. Naturally, the conversation has started to revolve around what comes next.
Unlocking expressivity with OP_CAT
Friday, July 26. 9:30 AM
Base58’s founder and everyone’s favorite Bitcoin educator Niftynei (Lisa) will look to set the tone on Friday morning by chairing a panel on the popular soft fork proposal OP_CAT. The hype around the script improvement proposal has not subsided and Bitcoin developers have been increasingly vocal about their affinity for CAT and its superpowers.
I expect co-panelists Andrew Poelstra, Director of Research at Blockstream, and fellow developers Rjindel & Brandon Black to make a strong case for the versatile script improvement.
BitVM: Pushing innovation without a soft fork
Friday, July 26. 10:00 AM
It’s hard to overstate the sheer brain power assembled in this talk. There is a reason BitVM has been the talk of the town since developer Robin Linus brought it onto the stage last year. The proposal has managed to attract an impressive crowd of builders and thinkers fascinated by the prospect of bringing fraud-proofs to Bitcoin.
With no working implementation yet, it also feels like crunch time for many of its promoters who have been talking a big game about its potential. The star-studded group of developers should be able to update us on the progress here and perhaps cut through the hype a bit.
Privacy at stake
Bitcoin’s legal battle for privacy: Free Samourai
Friday, July 26. 2:00 PM
The arrest of developers Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill in April sent shockwaves through the Bitcoin industry. Fixtures of the community for nearly a decade, both had been ardent proponents of Bitcoin users’ rights to privacy. Now that the dust has settled, questions linger about the case’s implications for open-source developers worldwide.
Veteran attorney Tor Ekeland who represented Roman Sterlingov in the high-profile “Bitcoin fog” mixer case will be joined by other…
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