The basic support for two Bitcoin improvement proposals (BIP) seems to emerge for the next Bitcoin soft fork, centered around two candidates: BIPS 119 and 348.
BIPs are the formal discussion method of the modifications proposed in Bitcoin. Theoretically, if a beep wins a sufficient widespread support, it will be added to Bitcoin, through a gentle fork or a routine update of the Bitcoin kernel. Often these beeps are mentioned by nicknames and several proposals can be included in a soft fork. The BIP 119 refers to OP_Checktemplaisifie (CTV) while BIP 348 refers to OP_CHECKSIGFROMSTACK (CSFS).
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The technical community of Bitcoin generally debates these beeps exhaustively. The Rafonage Wizards – a Bitcoin development company best known for its NFT Bitcoin – expressed a useful graphic explaining the confusing and apparently circular process of these discussions.
In short, the Bitcoin Soft Fork process requires an approximate estimate of the support of Bitcoin stakeholders, including developers, guards, investors and minors. The best proxy for this stakeholder support remains Bitcoin Miners, which can point out the support for a modification of the code base by signaling changes in their extracted blocks. As a rule, Bitcoin Core requests 95% of the blocks over a period to report the change before locking the activation update.
However, there is no definitive heuristic to define what “generalized support” looks like, and Bitcoin consensus is a target in constantly evolving moving. Minors are useful for reporting a change only because they are a really “countable” entity on the Bitcoin network. In other words, it is difficult to obtain your say on the consensus of the world of meat given the decentralized structure of Bitcoin.
During February and March, we recorded a final change, because many developers provided their explicit support to the two BIPs.
What is in a proposal?
In recent weeks, many Western Bitcoin developers have tweeted their support for CTV and CSFS – a strong signal that at least Twitterverse gathers in favor of certain Bitcoin changes.
CTV and CSFS allow new ways to write the Bitcoin script. Bitcoin script is the lower Bitcoin level programming language used for, among other things, the creation and sending of transactions. Proposed by the former contributor of Bitcoin Core Jeremy Rubin, CTV has existed for more than half a decade, while CSFS was only formalized in November 2024 by Jeremy Rubin and Brandon Black.
These two beeps would allow “alliances” on Bitcoin. An alliance simply restricted how a portfolio can spend bitcoin in future transactions. Alliances should generally considerably improve the landscape of Bitcoin self-works, costs management and improve existing Bitcoin technology such as Lightning, ARK and contract-based applications.
In addition, the developers consider that these two proposals are “closely defined”. In simple terms, this means that if they are activated, there is a low probability that users use them for something unexpected. The community of Bitcoin developers tends to deliberate with caution all the Bitcoin changes. For example, even if the BIP 119 has been unchanged for almost half a decade, once a long time ago, the CTV was considered far too aggressive for activation.
A long time
You may remember that the previous Rubin for CTV campaign has received a strong decline – notably Bitcoiners with large following, notably Adam Back and Jimmy Song. The criticisms have evolved into a significant decline on the part of many members of the Bitcoin community, which ultimately led Rubin to take a step back from Bitcoin all together.
So what changed? The recent advocacy for the OP_Cat Opcode (BIP 347) seems to have extended the Overton window of the acceptable Bitcoin proposals, framing CTV & CSF as the relatively “conservative” options. It is important to note that most OP_CAT supporters are also in favor of BIP 119 and 348 (and most proposals in general).
What can we then expect? On the one hand, no more conversation. The developers should meet in some technical conferences such as OPNEXT in April, BTC ++ in July and Tabconf in October. Once the developers are starting to form an approximate consensus, the real activation of the flexible fork moves to minors, the community and investors.
However, there is no formalized processes for “how to soft fork bitcoin”. So we find ourselves with many open questions. For example, a potential gentle fork will she include just CTV and CSFS? OP_CAT – Who is often included in this OPCODE suite – will join the conversation? How will real activation of the sweet fork occur? And will other stakeholders such as Bitcoin minors take note?
Only one thing is clear: you will have to make yourself comfortable with a lot of abbreviations.
