This is an article by Lucas Nuzzi that examines several of the technological innovations being worked on in Bitcoin right now.
Over the last several years, there have been naysayers proclaiming Bitcoin’s technology technology is outdated, that the innovation is happening on other protocols and other tokens/chains, that Bitcoin is the MySpace of cryptocurrencies, etc. These claims are woefully uninformed, or the claims of snake-oil salesmen shilling a new project.
On the contrary, damn near all of the interesting, useful, cutting edge, revolutionary research and development in the entire cryptocurrency space is happening on Bitcoin. It is Bitcoin that has attracted the strongest network effect of developer mindshare of all cryptocurrency projects. And it is precisely this already massive and growing collective of human capital that makes me most bullish on Bitcoin long-term.
Lucas notes that the core set of consensus rules are unchanging—indeed the rules are impossible to change, and this is a good thing as these rules are what set Bitcoin’s advantageous monetary properties (e.g. fixed supply). Instead, innovation is happening in a modular fashion, with new technology being built to work within the parameters of the consensus rules and on top of the Bitcoin base layer protocol.
It is incredibly hard to keep up with all the proposals and new technology being built around Bitcoin. I spend multiple hours per day reading about this stuff, but am still ignorant of or behind the curve on many of the technologies covered in this article. The pace of innovation is staggering!
So, dive in and brush up on some of the cool stuff happening to improve Bitcoin. These continued improvements are what will enable a new, more just and equitable monetary system.