Bitcoin Tech #5 - Bitcoin Consensus with Shinobi

 
 
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“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

SHOW DESCRIPTION

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.

TIMESTAMPS

00:05:07: Introductions
00:07:07: Hard fork or soft fork
00:09:12: A recap on nodes
00:12:37: Miners and blockchains
00:20:36: Block times and sizes
00:25:13: Consensus rules…
00:29:46: Chain splits and Bcash
00:31:38: The role of the exchanges
00:33:57: Orphan blocks
00:36:25: Confirmations of blocks
00:42:09: All about upgrades
00:50:23: Measuring consensus
00:52:29: History of Bitcoin forks
00:57:00: Soft forks to maintain Bitcoin
01:01:44: Miners signalling
01:06:34: Taproot is coming
01:09:20: BIPs
01:11:43: The importance of Taproot
01:17:57: Malicious forks
01:19:56: Elon Musk
01:24:37: The Mining Council
01:32:00: Final comments


 

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SHOW NOTES

Connect with Shinobi:

Mentioned in the interview:

Other Relevant WBD Podcasts:

PodcastPeter McCormack