Oddbean

Along with Steve Lee of Spiral and Ren of Electrical Capital, I co-authored a paper on Bitcoin consensus and the analysis of risks around protocol upgrades from a technical & economic perspective: https://github.com/bitcoin-cap/bcap Here's the v1.0 PDF version: https://github.com/bitcoin-cap/bcap/blob/main/bcap_v1.0.pdf It explores what consensus is, how Bitcoin has historically upgraded its consensus over time including through contentious periods, and what some of the future paths and associated risks there are for potential changes in the future. The paper doesn't take a stance for or against any given consensus change, but rather analyzes the field for how changes are made (which partially evolves over time as the network grows, i.e. 2024 is different than 2017 is different than 2009), and what some of the specific risks are for contentious changes from a blended economic and technical perspective. For example, we analyze scenarios around bounty claims, which is a risk that can manifest when the majority of miners adopt a change but only a minority of economic nodes have: https://github.com/bitcoin-cap/bcap?tab=readme-ov-file#how-might-this-occur-with-a-soft-fork And in a world of sovereign holders, corporate treasurer holders, ETF holders, and so forth, some of that could play out differently today or in the future compared to how it might have played out in the past. And so we provide a framework to help analyze those scenarios and risks. For the v1.0 version, we had the paper reviewed by major exchanges, ETFs, corporate treasurers, developers, miners, legal experts, philosophy professors, etc to make it as accurate and helpful as an educational resource across domains. However, we consider our initial version to only be the start. We're releasing the paper to the public domain, and inviting people to contribute to it or even help maintain it on Github. It's a living document, in other words. We're not the authorities on this; we just did a lot of research and review on the topic as a starting point. If there's something you think could be clarified, or something you disagree with, then we invite your contribution! And a big thank you to the initial people that reviewed it and provided feedback for the initial v1.0 version!