Stephan Livera Podcast Why Bitcoin Should Not Ossify - Steve Lee SLP569
Apr 29, 2024
Steve Lee, Lead @ Spiral, joins to discuss why Bitcoin should not ossify and the risks of mining pool centralization. They delve into the importance of ongoing software updates, the significance of reproducible builds for security, and the dangers of power concentration in mining pools. The conversation also highlights efforts to simplify Bitcoin purchases and visualize blockchain data, emphasizing the need for consistent evolution over ossification.
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Non-Consensus Code Matters As Much As Consensus
- Bitcoin core contains many non-consensus modules (wallet, GUI, P2P, policies) with different risk profiles.
- Policy changes like standardness for OP_RETURN materially affect new applications such as ordinals, forcing proprietary APIs today.
Enable P2P Encryption And Traffic Shaping
- Improve P2P privacy by enabling encrypted and authenticated transport (BIP324 v2) and add traffic shaping.
- Spiral and others fund work to hide Bitcoin node traffic patterns that reveal block relay timing.
Verify Binaries With Reproducible Builds
- Use reproducible builds to verify binaries match audited source code before running wallets or nodes.
- Tools like guix/gitian and bootstrapping small audited toolchains reduce risk from compromised dependencies.