Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Ordinals BIP PR

From: Andrew Poelstra <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2023 13:45:44 +0000

On Fri, Oct 20, 2023 at 10:38:01PM -0700, Casey Rodarmor via bitcoin-dev wrote:
>
> <snip>
> 
> There has been much misunderstanding of the nature of the BIP process.
> BIPS, in particular informational BIPs, are a form of technical
> documentation, and their acceptance does not indicate that they will be
> included in any implementation, including Bitcoin Core, nor that they they
> have consensus among the community.
> 
> Preexisting BIPs include hard-fork block size increases, hard-fork
> proof-of-work changes, colored coin voting protocols, rejected soft fork
> proposals, encouragement of address reuse, and drivechain.
>
> <snip>
>

I agree and I think it sets a bad precedent to be evaluating BIPs based
on the merits of their implementation (vs their specification) or their
consequences for the network. Actual consensus is much bigger than the
BIPs repo, so this accomplishes little beyond making the BIPs repo itself
hard to interact with.

In the worst case it may cause people to interpret BIP numbers as
indicating that proposals are "blessed" by some particular influential
set of people, which can only cause problems.

-- 
Andrew Poelstra
Director of Research, Blockstream
Email: apoelstra at wpsoftware.net
Web:   https://www.wpsoftware.net/andrew

The sun is always shining in space
    -Justin Lewis-Webster