Are Covenants Necessary for Bitcoin? with Brandon Black (SLP537)

Not everybody understands that blockchains themselves don’t scale. And this may create some tricky implications if we want to onboard large numbers of people to Bitcoin. This is why some of the discussion nowadays is about soft forks and covenants. Brandon Black rejoins me to talk about some of his ideas on how many people can use Bitcoin with current tech, and how covenants such as CTV (Check Template Verify) could help improve this. We discuss:

• How many people can use Bitcoin
• Why not build L3?
• Thoughts on block size
• “Rush to the exits”
• Different kinds of forks
• Covenant proposals explained in english
• Concrete proposals
• Commercial demand
• Unforeseen risks
• Value density

Links:

• X: @reardencode
• Timeout Trees explanation article by Shinobi

Prior Episodes:

• SLP505 MuSig2 in Practice, APO, CTV & Bitcoin Soft Forks

Sponsors:

• Swan.com (code LIVERA)
• CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
• Mempool.space

Stephan Livera links:

• Follow me on X: @stephanlivera
• Subscribe to the podcast