Subject: Re: [bitcoindev] CTV + CSFS: a letter

From: Matt Corallo <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2025 14:04:41 -0400

On 6/11/25 8:59 PM, Harsha Goli wrote:

> Quickly chiming in here. I'm digging in heavily to the different needs and drivers of businesses and 
> individuals in the space. I think James is being quite literal here. There is not unity on what 
> should happen after if we reach 2026 without any progress on covenants.
> 
> Not speaking for James, but from what I've seen there is no substance or chatter regarding any such 
> "vague threat".

I do think this highlights why sign-on letters tend to have little impact and are really quite 
useless for this kind of thing: when you actually go talk to people, you come away understanding 
that they have very different views on the issue at hand.

Some signers appear to have intention to release an "activation client", meanwhile when I talk to 
other signers they're really just trying to encourage more focused research on things in this area. 
Those are *drastically* different views, yet both are "covered" by the same letter.

Worse yet, there's now organizations signing this letter (yay NYA reprisal!), which similarly cannot 
possibly be filled with people with identical views (of course organizations themselves cannot opine 
on technical bitcoin decisions, individuals do, there is good reason why organizations do not have a 
role within IETF, only engineers expressing their own opinions, which may benefit their organization).

Ignoring the threats in the letter, there's also a question of what the desire is - some signers 
specifically want CTV + CSFS now, some signers are worried about "Bitcoin's ossification" and just 
want to see progress on changes (in some cases even GCC making progress may suffice!), while yet 
others want other specific things and imagine that the politics of getting their thing will be 
easier once CTV + CSFS happens. These all mandate drastically different responses, yet again because 
they're all bunched into one letter we cannot figure out what it is that they actually want.

Instead, and I've encouraged various people who've signed to do this, having engineers who wish to 
utilize these features speak up about what, specific, tools and protocols they wish to build using 
CTV + CSFS would be much more interesting. Unlike a generic "We Want Things" sign-on letter, 
individual messages indicating desire to utilize features is way more compelling, not just to 
overall impression of Bitcoin's consensus, but also to the individuals deciding what to do with 
their time - now you can see actual real-world desires.

Matt

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