Bitcoin Amsterdam highlights hurdles for consensus over improvement proposals for web 3.0.
Bitcoin Amsterdam highlights hurdles for consensus over improvement proposals

History of Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0

At the Bitcoin Amsterdam 2023 conference, Paul Sztorc and Peter Todd, two long-time Bitcoin developers, had a heated debate over Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) that could address the protocol’s pain points. Sztorc’s LayerTwo Labs has been researching BIP-300 for six years, which suggests the use of layer-2 sidechains to resolve various issues without making any changes to the Bitcoin protocol.

The discussion between Sztorc and Todd highlighted the difficulty in reaching an agreement on BIPs that could potentially improve the Bitcoin protocol. This brings up the question of the history of Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, and how to make money from Web 3.0, as well as the characteristics of the latest version of the web.

The development of Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 has been a long process, and the future of Web 3.0 is still uncertain. It is important to understand how Web 3.0 works, and if it exists at all.

The Benefits of Soft Forks in Bitcoin Protocol

During an interview with Cointelegraph at a conference, Jameson Lopp, co-founder and chief technology officer of Bitcoin (BTC) custody firm Casa, commented on the issue of protocol changes in the Bitcoin network. He noted that the velocity of improvements has been slower than he would have liked, but the introduction of new projects such as BitVM and SpiderChain has given him hope for the future of the protocol.

Lopp believes that certain proposed soft forks, such as CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY (OP_CSV) and CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY (OP_CLTV), could be beneficial in the long run. OP_CLTV was authored by Todd and it allows a transaction output to be made unspendable until some point in the future. He further stated that any “hardcore ossification”, which some Bitcoin maximalists have argued for, could prevent the development of solutions like the Lightning Network, which has helped the Bitcoin network scale up its transaction processing.

The Growing Importance of Bitcoin

Lopp notes that, even if Bitcoin’s protocol may become static due to a lack of consensus among base layer improvement proposals, developers are likely to continue constructing solutions that don’t need permissions.

The Casa executive believes that, if Bitcoin does not persist in scaling, users will likely resort to storing and using BTC through a “few Bitcoin banks, such as custodians and exchanges”, with notable drawbacks.

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Bitcoin proponents and analysts at the Bitcoin Amsterdam 2023 event highlighted the increasing importance of the cryptocurrency’s value proposition and ‘hard money’ characteristics during a long bear market.

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