BIP-54, the Great Consensus Cleanup, could be Bitcoin's next soft fork

[Xavi]

Bitcoin may be heading for its first protocol upgrade since Taproot, and it is a modest one. Decrypt reports on BIP-54, known as the Great Consensus Cleanup, which was first proposed in 2019 and fixes four long standing problems

Those problems are blocks crafted to slow down validation, timestamp manipulation known as time warp, 64 byte transactions that can fake Merkle proofs, and duplicate coinbase transaction IDs. None of them are being exploited now, but each is a weakness that could cause trouble one day

Matt Corallo, a long time Bitcoin developer and one of the authors, puts the chance of it becoming the next soft fork at 80 percent. He says it fixes things everyone agrees are problems, and that it could serve as a practice run for activating changes

Not everyone is impressed. Paul Sztorc, chief executive of LayerTwo Labs, called it a janitorial maintenance fork that does not do anything, and he says developers surveyed at TABconf gave September 2027 as the earliest likely activation, with most expecting 2028 or later

Taproot activated in 2021, and more ambitious proposals like OP_CAT and OP_CTV have stalled. A cleanup that almost everyone supports could rebuild confidence in the upgrade process itself. Boring changes are sometimes exactly what a careful network needs

Should Bitcoin focus on fixing weaknesses before adding new features? And when do you think the next soft fork will activate?

Why Bitcoin's Next Soft Fork Could Feel Like a Practice Run - Decryptdecrypt.co