Bitcoin Optech Addressing Scalability Problem

A team of Bitcoin engineers, led by Bitcoin Core contributor John Newbery, announced the launch of a new non-profit organization called Bitcoin Operations Technology Group (Bitcoin Optech) on July 20.

The organization is being backed by industry majors like Wences Casares, a member of PayPal’s board of directors, John Pfeffer, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.’s executive and Chaincode Labs, a cryptocurrency R&D group.

Bitcoin Optech’s Goal

The aim of Bitcoin Optech is to address the massive issue of scalability in the Bitcoin network. The idea is to collaborate with companies that depend on Bitcoin software to address the problem of scalability. This also includes finding a way to have lower transaction fees.

According to Newbery, there are a number of scaling techs already in the market, but they haven’t been adopted by a majority of the companies. He gave the example of the biggest change to Bitcoin’s Blockchain code, the Segregated Witness (SegWit), which caused so much of controversy within the community. Despite the fact that SegWit cut Bitcoin transaction fees by half, businesses have been slow to adopt these changes.

Now, says Coinbase’s lead Bitcoin engineer Brock Miller, if there is a collaboration between engineers across businesses in the industry, then they will achieve much more than they could be tackling the problem alone.

Putting It Together

Bitcoin Optech has so far connected with 15 to 20 Bitcoin based companies and the response they have gotten has surprised the team because of the excitement that their project is generating. In fact, the organization has already signed on 6 member companies, including industry majors like Coinbase, BitGo and Square.

Bitcoin Optech is looking at a multipronged approach. To start, the non-profit has identified several key technology issues they can help resolve. Coin Selection and Fee Estimation are two such issues that companies are grappling with that Bitcoin Optech is going to help solve.

The organization is also going to hold workshops (they just held their first workshop in San Francisco recently) to go over some of the scaling technologies that already exist and whether it makes sense for companies to adopt such technologies.

Weekly newsletters and an open-source cookbook which details different types of scaling solutions are just some of the other plans that the non-profit has for the future.

Healing Rifts

Interestingly enough, this non-profit organization is already helping heal rifts within the Bitcoin community. Differences in opinion with regard to the kind of technical upgrades to the Blockchain had led to a rift being created between the Bitcoin Core protocol developers and the industry’s companies. Now, those factions are coming together through Bitcoin Optech to look for solutions to Bitcoin’s scalability issues.