Bitcoin Tech #5 - Bitcoin Consensus with Shinobi - WBD357

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.