A group of companies related to Bitcoin announced on July 20 the launch of a project called Bitcoin Optech, which seeks to help companies that use this technology to adopt the scalability solutions that are proven and operational, in order to avoid new increase in transaction fees.
The project is focused on uniting companies and independent developers , since they consider that, in cases where the implementation of scalability proposals is necessary, these two groups are usually distanced.
As advertised on their website, one of their short-term goals is:
They ensure that their focus is to work with members of organizations to "reduce the size of transactions and minimize the effect of the subsequent increase in transaction fees." However, despite being enthusiastic about proposals such as Lightning Network or Schnorr firms , they will focus on technologies that can be implemented today as SegWit .
Despite having several Bitcoin Core developers, the main Bitcoin client that has always looked for the implementation of protocols that do not compromise the decentralization of the network, this project is founded and sponsored by representatives of companies that have been against the approaches of this group.
It highlights, for example, the support of BitGo and Xapo . The main representatives of these portfolios, Mike Belshe and Wences Casares, were part of the team that promoted the strong Bitcoin bifurcation called SegWit2x in November of last year. This hardfork , which sought to enlarge the size of the blocks to 2 MB, had great deficiencies in its code and was finally canceled due to lack of consensus on the part of the mining community.
Other member companies of Bitcoin Optech are Coinbase, one of the main portfolios and exchange houses of the ecosystem; Ledger, manufacturer of cold wallets; the Square payment processor; and Purse, a platform that allows you to buy Amazon gift cards with bitcoins.
Despite this, the initiative also has the support of Chaincode Labs , an organization that promotes the research and development of open source projects and has regular Bitcoin Core contributors such as Alex Morcos, Matt Corallo and John Newberry. Also involved was Andrew Chow, who developed the Improvement Proposal for Bitcoin 174 (BIP 174), which was integrated into the Bitcoin repository yesterday.
If the monetary influence of companies does not influence the action of this project, it is possible that it achieves its task of uniting independent developers and companies that use this technology.
