Taproot was a big deal for privacy and scripting, but what’s next for Bitcoin? Do you all think we should look into soft forks like Ark or focus on Layer 2 stuff like Fedimint and improving Lightning? Or is it better to keep upgrades conservative?
Honestly, the privacy boost from Taproot isn’t that impressive. It mostly comes down to a couple of things. First, you don’t expose the parts of the script path that you’re not using. Second, it’s all about Schnorr Signatures, mainly for multi-sig, where you can aggregate signatures without revealing individual keys. Ark is more of a Layer 2 thing, not really a soft fork for the Bitcoin protocol. Same for Fedimint and Lightning.
Open new doors? Nah, they should stick to Layer 2. There’s a reason those solutions are there, and it’s all about trade-offs. Bitcoin should focus on being simple and effective, not rush into upgrades that aren’t well thought out.
I’ve got two big upgrades in mind: Covenants. This would let you set conditions on how payments can be spent. Right now, once someone gets the coins, they can do whatever they want with them. But with Covenants, you could make them follow certain rules, like sending to specific addresses. This feature would be a big deal for sidechains, Lightning, and Ark.