BIP BIP Bitcoin!
Big week for BIPs. BIG WEEK. Specifically assigning long awaited BIPs with official proposal numbers. Moving the ball closer towards an activation path if bitcoiners running Bitcoin Core think the additions to the codebase would increase the utility of the network.
However in this case I believe we (the authors) waited to request numbers until the proposal and writeups were fairly mature. Barring significant issues found in review (which remains welcome of course), I do not think we intend to make semantical changes anymore.
— Pieter Wuille (@pwuille) January 24, 2020
Thanks to everyone who helped us get here: co-authors @ajtowns, @n1ckler, and @real_or_random, everyone who contributed to the document, the participants in the @bitcoinoptech workshops and structured review, Greg Maxwell for the original idea, and many others.
— Pieter Wuille (@pwuille) January 24, 2020
First up, we have Pieter Wuille's bip-taproot proposal which has been broken down into three separate BIPs designated as BIP 340, BIP 341 and BIP 342. We started covering bip-taproot last May when it was first released as a concept. It's crazy to see how quickly the dev community has vetted, reviewed and refined the proposal to get it ready for debate on potential activation paths. As Pieter points out in the thread above, the BIPs are simply final proposals put forward. Whether or not they get added into Bitcoin is up to bitcoin users. The devs are simply providing an option for the market to implement if it so pleases.
In terms of the specifics of the BIPs. BIP 340 would enable Schnorr signatures. BIP 341 would activate SegWit version 1 (there are 16 SegWit versions that can be activated, version 0 is the only one to be activated to date). SegWit version 1 would be compatible with Schnorr signatures and pave the way for Taproot usage. BIP 342 would make improvements to Schnorr signatures, batch validation, and signature hashing so that Taproot scripts can be validated.
If these BIPs are accepted by bitcoin users they would help improve efficiency, scalability, privacy and robustness. Very big gets in your Uncle Marty's opinion. But don't take my word for it. Verify for yourself.
That's not all though. Jeremy Rubin's BIP OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY, which we have been covering in this rag as well, has been assigned as BIP 119. BIP 119, if accepted by the network, would enable a new, simple op code that will help with mempool congestion, bitcoin vaults, and other use cases. Luckily for you freaks, I dropped a podcast episode with Jeremy this morning that covers BIP 119 in detail (before it was officially assigned a number), among other things. Check it out if you want to learn about how this BIP could help bitcoin users.
And the haters will tell you Bitcoin development is stagnant. LOL!
Final thought...
So ready for the weekend.
Enjoy yours, freaks.
