A group of contributors to the open-source Bitcoin Core development project met late last month in Switzerland for a sit-down review of the code for Segregated Witness, a proposal aimed at scaling the bitcoin network.
The gathering in Zürich drew about 20 Core developers , and comes at a time when there remains deep divisions in the community over the actions of the group, as well as its approach to scaling the bitcoin network.
In this light, the meeting in Zürich had a certain gravity, given that the work being performed will have major implications for the bitcoin network’s trajectory in the months and years ahead. The Segregated Witness proposal follows discussion going back to mid-2015, though the broader question of scaling the bitcoin network has long been debated by developers.
It’s a process that isn’t without risk. The contributors to Bitcoin Core are perhaps best viewed as the guardians of as much as $9bn in value denominated in bitcoin. As the network is run on the code published by Bitcoin Core, a foul-up could expose users and their money to security risks.
This is not to say that the issues aren’t borne in mind by those contributing to the project, and the Segregated Witness proposal in particular.
In interview, contributor Eric Lombrozo said that the process of integrating SegWit into Bitcoin Core “is pretty high-stakes”, while at the same time defending the team’s position on scaling the network as a necessity to avoid technical problems.
He told CoinDesk: “It’s a difficult challenge to do this without destabilizing the network. A very difficult challenge.” Sit-down in Zurich
According to Lombrozo, the group wanted to avoid making any concrete decisions during the face-to-face meeting, both in terms of SegWit as well as broader development matters, leaving that to the community’s mailing list and chatroom-based meetings where […]
