• Original Author: CoinDesk
• Translation: Odaily Planet Daily Nan Zhi

Bitcoin's open-source development is often praised as one of its major advantages, demonstrating the network's resilience and elusive nature. However, careful observation reveals that complex tasks such as real-time development, updates, and patching of the blockchain often face challenges.

One of the major issues in recent years has been the bottleneck in editing BIPs (Bitcoin Improvement Proposals), which are the standards for proposing non-binding software updates that will in some way alter the Bitcoin protocol.

With the global distributed Bitcoin development community deciding to nominate five new BIP editors, the situation is about to change. This is the first time in Bitcoin's history that more than one person will hold this position, which has been held solely by the controversial Bitcoin OG Luke Dashjr for the past decade.

Bitcoin core developer Ava Chow led the nomination process and nominated five new editors:

• Bitcoin developer and co-founder of Custodia Bank, Bryan Bishop;
• Co-hosts of the bitdevs.org mailing list, Murch and Ruben Somsen;
• Chief Technology Officer of Lightning Labs, Olaoluwa Osuntokun;
• Bitcoin Core contributor Jonatack.

What problems does having only one BIP editor cause?

Excessive Workload

Chow stated in an interview with CoinDesk, "The problem is that Luke is the only BIP editor, which means he is the only one who can merge content into the BIP repository, covering all work from small to large. As a result, Luke does not have time to handle this."

Odaily Planet Daily note: The repository refers to a storage repository used in version control systems to store project code, documents, and other resources. It is a collection containing all project files and their history.

"I think what he is doing is what he thinks is best for Bitcoin and what he thinks is most decentralized and beneficial for the entire currency. BIP editing is a rarely seen aspect of the development process, including everything from correcting spelling errors in proposals to evaluating whether they should become BIPs, assigning numbers, and providing detailed feedback. The final step is to merge the BIP into the GitHub repository." Chow affirmed Luke Dashjr's many contributions over the years. In addition to regular contributions to Bitcoin Core, Dashjr also serves as the Chief Technology Officer of Ocean Mining.

Chow further explained, "One of the biggest problems is that Luke will comment, for example, that the author needs to fix a certain issue, and then the author will fix it within a few hours. But then we won't see Luke's response to that PR again in another month or two."

Previous Singular Decision-Making by Luke

The first BIP proposal (BIP 0001) was introduced by early Bitcoin developer Amir Taaki in August 2011, introducing the process of submitting improvement proposals, which has become more formalized over the years but has not run particularly smoothly. Bitcoin Core almost never submits BIPs; they often focus on improving consensus, wallets, private key management, or, as Chow put it, new transaction types.

Chow stated, "The boundary between what is a BIP and what is not a BIP is somewhat blurred. Proposals like Ordinals, Colored Coins, and Taproot Assets introduce new ways of using Bitcoin, but perhaps do not formally change the protocol."

Fundamentally, the standards for what qualifies as a BIP are decided by the editors. Chow believes that adding more voices from different backgrounds can make this process more efficient. While most discussions may still take place out of the public eye, more debate may help better define the standards for successful proposals. The editor nomination process started in January and has progressed quite smoothly according to Bitcoin standards.

Luke's Battle with Ordinals

In fact, Luke Dashjr is more known for his previous plans to "block" the Ordinals protocol. In December 23, Luke Dashjr stated, "Inscriptions are using a vulnerability in Bitcoin Core to send spam to the blockchain. Since 2013, Bitcoin Core has allowed users to set limits on the size of additional data in their queues or mined transactions. By obfuscating their data as program code, Inscriptions bypassed this limit, hoping it would be fixed before the v27 version next year."

As a result of this controversy, ORDIs once fell from a minimum of about 65 USDT to 41 USDT, and the proposal was ultimately rejected in January 24.

The Role and Discourse Power of Editors in Bitcoin Code Changes

A piece of code needs to go through a series of strict processes to be merged into Bitcoin's codebase, to ensure proposal quality and community consensus, usually including 7 major steps: writing proposals and code, community discussion, modification and improvement, consensus voting, code implementation, merging into the codebase, deployment, and activation.

It can be seen that editors focus more on the front end of the process. The addition of more editors can introduce more possibilities for change in Bitcoin, but the ultimate implementation still requires consensus from various forces such as the community, miners, and code merge permission holders.

A New Wave of Bitcoin is Coming, and the Proposal is Timely

In the blockchain world, "act fast, break conventions" and "test in production" are common practices, but Bitcoin's development can be seen as relatively slow. For example, the last major comprehensive protocol upgrade, Taproot, was initiated three years ago and officially launched after years of development.

Everything has changed since the introduction of Casey Rodamor's Ordinals protocol last year. In an attempt to resist the "Degen" aspect of the broader crypto market for years, it ignited a whole new meme culture. Therefore, it can be said that this is the best time to join new BIP editors.

Although some people took advantage of yesterday's nomination moment to mock, posting OP_CAT on Twitter, calling it a new way to introduce smart contracts on Bitcoin to build more complex applications, and assigning it BIP number 420.

Despite some people taking advantage of yesterday's nomination moment for mockery, posting OP_CAT on Twitter—a new way to introduce smart contracts on Bitcoin to build more complex applications—assigned BIP number 420. This mockery illustrates the inherent tension and human conflict in proposal reviews.

Odaily Planet Daily note: In fact, OPCAT was removed (disabled) by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2010 and has not yet been assigned a BIP number._

For example, Dashjr is a public opponent of OP_CAT and Ordinals, and some people believe he unfairly blocked the approval of their respective proposals. Chow stated that although she holds a more "lenient view" of what should be considered a BIP, she believes that Ordinals (which she calls "a bit silly") does not meet the standards, but she will not hesitate to oppose it.

More editors may mean more BIPs approved and merged, as the ultimate goal of proposals is efficiency. However, Bitcoin may always be more interested in debate than speed, as it is full of strong personalities with strong opinions.

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