比特币大辩论：创新与僵化

目前比特币开发者之间最大的争论是：比特币协议应该改变多少？所有软件，包括比特币，都必须不断发展

Visual representation of Bitcoin cryptocurrency. /Getty Images Plus

比特币加密货币的视觉表示。 /盖蒂图片社加

LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 30: In this photo illustration, a visual representation of Bitcoin ... [+] cryptocurrency is pictured on May 30, 2021 in London, England. Bitcoin is a decentralised digital currency, which has been in use since 2009. (Photo illustration by Edward Smith/Getty Images)

英国伦敦 - 5 月 30 日：在这张照片插图中，比特币的视觉表现...... [+] 加密货币于 2021 年 5 月 30 日在英国伦敦拍摄。比特币是一种去中心化的数字货币，自 2009 年以来一直在使用。（Edward Smith/Getty Images 插图）

The big debate right now among Bitcoin developers is this: How much should the Bitcoin protocol change? All software, Bitcoin included, must evolve over time as users, networks, and use cases evolve. The question is not binary, but a matter of degree.

目前比特币开发者之间最大的争论是：比特币协议应该改变多少？所有软件，包括比特币，都必须随着用户、网络和用例的发展而不断发展。这个问题不是二元的，而是一个程度的问题。

Bitcoin has always been in a state of change, sometimes more than others. Perhaps the most radical changes occurred in the early years, when Satoshi changed the block size limit and the functionality of the Bitcoin scripting language in major ways. Now that Satoshi is gone, it is up to the core developers to reach a consensus on which changes to adopt moving forward, and this can be a contentious issue.

比特币一直处于变化状态，有时比其他变化更多。也许最根本的变化发生在早年，当时中本聪在很大程度上改变了区块大小限制和比特币脚本语言的功能。既然中本聪已经离开，核心开发人员就需要就下一步采取哪些改变达成共识，这可能是一个有争议的问题。

There are a cadre of changes that are without controversy, namely, the changes that improve the security of the network with almost no foreseeable resource or opportunity costs. The best example of this is p2pkh, the use of hashing of public keys. When Bitcoin started, a Bitcoin address was a public key, a point on Bitcoin's elliptic curve. To pay to that address, you would pay to that public key. After p2pkh, the Bitcoin address became the hash of a public key, which is more secure because the public key passes through the hashing algorithm SHA-256. If an attacker were to break Bitcoin’s elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA), it would still need to break SHA-256 in order to recover the private key that secures those bitcoins. Adding an extra hash operation is computationally trivial, and so no one protested p2pkh.

有一系列变革是毫无争议的，即提高网络安全性而几乎没有可预见的资源或机会成本的变革。最好的例子是 p2pkh，即公钥散列的使用。当比特币出现时，比特币地址是一个公钥，是比特币椭圆曲线上的一个点。要向该地址付款，您需要向该公钥付款。 p2pkh之后，比特币地址就变成了公钥的哈希值，更加安全，因为公钥经过哈希算法SHA-256。如果攻击者要破解比特币的椭圆曲线数字签名算法 (ECDSA)，它仍然需要破解 SHA-256 才能恢复保护这些比特币的私钥。添加额外的哈希运算在计算上是微不足道的，因此没有人反对 p2pkh。

But other improvements are not so innocuous. The last upgrade, Taproot, dramatically increased the transactional complexity and privacy of Bitcoin transactions. But it also opened the door to new use cases that I do not believe the core developers would have anticipated, like ordinals and inscriptions. Any major change that widens the functionality of Bitcoin has both upside potential and downside risk.

但其他改进并非那么无害。最后一次升级 Taproot 极大地增加了比特币交易的交易复杂性和隐私性。但它也打开了新用例的大门，我认为核心开发人员不会预料到这些用例，例如序数和铭文。任何扩大比特币功能的重大变化都既有上行潜力，也有下行风险。

This is probably why Satoshi probably disabled some of the early opcodes in Bitcoin to constrain the Bitcoin scripting language deliberately. When the digital object is money, the incentives for attacks are high, and so it makes sense to limit Bitcoin's programmability to limit the attack surface. At the same time, new functionality can attract new users.

这可能就是为什么中本聪可能会禁用比特币中的一些早期操作码来故意限制比特币脚本语言。当数字对象是金钱时，攻击的动机很高，因此限制比特币的可编程性以限制攻击面是有意义的。同时，新功能可以吸引新用户。

This question of whether and how to modify the protocol is, in my view, the most important question in Bitcoin development today, and possibly in the future. So, here's the skinny on the debate.

在我看来，是否以及如何修改协议的问题是当今乃至未来比特币发展中最重要的问题。所以，这是辩论的要点。

The case for innovation

创新案例

The case for innovation comes from those who want to expand Bitcoin’s scripting language to include a wide array of programs and smart contracts. These contracts are possible on other blockchains like Ethereum, and the innovators want to bring that functionality to Bitcoin, the world's most secure network. However, there are other more conservative and traditional Bitcoiners who also believe that expanding the financial use cases of Bitcoin in the future will require more programmability and flexibility in scripting. This was part of the motivation for Taproot to allow for higher dimensional financial contracts on Bitcoin.

创新的理由来自那些想要扩展比特币脚本语言以包含各种程序和智能合约的人。这些合约可以在以太坊等其他区块链上实现，创新者希望将该功能引入世界上最安全的网络比特币。然而，还有其他更保守和传统的比特币支持者也认为，未来扩大比特币的金融用例将需要更多的可编程性和脚本灵活性。这是 Taproot 允许在比特币上建立更高维度的金融合约的部分动机。

Some of the motivation for innovation comes from the desire to create and tinker, which is a part of software developer culture writ large (perhaps apparent more outside of Bitcoin than within). But there's another justification often given for protocol innovation: Bitcoin doesn't have enough usage today, so the protocol needs to attract new users. These new users will have new use cases, requiring new functionality in Bitcoin programming. It's impossible to predict these use cases in advance, but it is possible to expand Bitcoin’s scripting to allow for these in the future.

创新的一些动机来自于创造和修补的愿望，这是软件开发人员文化的一部分（可能在比特币之外比在比特币内部更明显）。但协议创新通常还有另一个理由：比特币目前的使用量还不够，因此该协议需要吸引新用户。这些新用户将有新的用例，需要比特币编程的新功能。不可能提前预测这些用例，但可以扩展比特币的脚本以在未来实现这些用例。

The case for ossification

骨化的情况

The ossifiers believe that the only innovation that Bitcoin needs is greater security. For example, relay messages between Bitcoin nodes today are unencrypted. And so, encrypting these messages would be computationally cheap and increase security. But anything beyond that would only increase the attack surface of Bitcoin, which could lead to downside risks that could upset the stability of the network and its use as a store of value.

僵化者认为，比特币唯一需要的创新是更高的安全性。例如，如今比特币节点之间的中继消息是未加密的。因此，加密这些消息的计算成本很低，并且可以提高安全性。但除此之外的任何事情只会增加比特币的攻击面，这可能会导致下行风险，从而扰乱网络的稳定性及其作为价值储存手段的用途。

If Bitcoin truly is to attract trillions of dollars of economic value in the next few decades, the chief objective should be stability and security, not innovation and experimentation. In fact, it is precisely the predictable and unchanging money supply of Bitcoin that distinguishes Bitcoin from central banks, which constantly change the fiat money supply at will. The flag of the ossifiers is “If it ain't broke, don't fix it,” and the vast majority of Bitcoin’s innovations happened in version 0.1 that Satoshi wrote.

如果比特币真的要在未来几十年内吸引数万亿美元的经济价值，那么主要目标应该是稳定性和安全性，而不是创新和实验。事实上，正是比特币可预测且不变的货币供应量将比特币与不断随意改变法定货币供应量的央行区分开来。僵化者的旗帜是“如果它没有坏，就不要修复它”，比特币的绝大多数创新都发生在中本聪编写的 0.1 版本中。

The debate today

今天的辩论

This debate takes form today most notably in the proposal for covenants,

这场辩论今天最引人注目地体现在契约提案中，