Bitcoin Network Developers Plans This Year
The developers of the most popular bitcoin network implementation software have big dreams of creating a truly global form of money.
The breadth of the to-do list was easy to see at the recent annual meeting in New York, where many of the most active software developers gathered. In a conversation narrated by Brian Bishop, they discussed development priorities for the coming year.
While not all of the developers were present at the meeting, an inside look at the short-term benchmarks of several of the key developers of the bitcon network, including longtime contributors Peter Wuile, Matt Corallo, and Corey Fields, is still clear. In addition, Bishop took a look behind the scenes, where experts are revisiting the code that now powers a network worth more than $147 billion.
Indeed, most of the conversations at the meeting in New York were focused on understanding how the team analyzes and adds new code. One of the main problems is that although the developers submit tons of code changes, there are always opponents who are knowledgeable enough to disagree with the changes due to possible bugs.
One developer reported:
As a reviewer, I won't be able to go through all of this and it's actively discouraging.
Some code changes are even lost due to load. Another developer even went so far as to call the growing list of proposed changes a "graveyard of cool ideas."
Distribution of priorities
Corallo is one of the many developers who have focused on making it easier for the mainstream Bitcoin Core nodes to work with. While this code is widely shared to offer the most secure way to use Bitcoin, it is generally difficult to set up and the entire process can take days or even weeks.
Chaincode co-founder and Bitcoin Core developer Alex Morkos explained at the meeting why he thinks it's important to make things easier.
While there is a "cultural push" to run nodes, Morcos said he worries many users don't understand the "real reason" for running it. He thinks that the network should be "sovereign" or be able to confirm the validity of a transaction, without the need to trust a third party.
Morkos put forward several ideas to make this "full sovereignty" possible for all.
Perhaps one of the biggest problems with Bitcoin nodes is the software is so big that smartphones can't handle it. The software is so powerful that users can only deploy the node on a computer that is permanently at home or at work.
But Morcos believes there is a way to change the situation. He hopes that one day, users will be able to connect their smartphones to nodes running at home, which will increase the security of the network.
Morkos also promoted the idea of using a full node to verify information about keys stored elsewhere, such as a hardware wallet, which is considered one of the most secure ways to store private keys. But while this would have made the software more convenient to use, Morcos had trouble implementing it.
Morkos said that although he is interested in these ideas, it is not his primary focus right now. However, he emphasizes that the inconvenience of using a full node is a pressing issue.
Morcos added:
Of course, the goal is to reduce the time to set up and get everything up and running as quickly as possible.
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