BSV Association Director of Stewardship Connor Murray Talks About the Upcoming Chronicle Update

On episode four of the CoinGeek Weekly Livestream, Director of Stewardship at the BSV Association, Connor Murray, joined Kurt Wuckert Jr. to talk

Bitcoin SV (BSV) is preparing for the next protocol update, known as Chronicle. In the fourth episode of the CoinGeek Weekly Livestream, Kurt Wuckert Jr. talked to Connor Murray, Director of Stewardship at the BSV Association, about the upcoming update, where people can learn more about it and much more. Check out the highlights below.

Also, be sure to check out the full livestream via the embed below for more on OP_VER, how the different Bitcoin forks are similar to religious denominations and what Wuckert thinks about Ross Ulbricht’s release from prison.

Bitcoin needs a steward because it’s set in stone

After introducing Murray, who should already be familiar to many BSV supporters, Wuckert inquires about his official title at the BSV Association (BSVA). He then asks Murray why Bitcoin needs a steward.

“The core philosophy of BSV is that the protocol is set in stone. No single entity should have the power to change it. The BSVA acts as a steward to protect and document the protocol. There’s one last update to go—Chronicle—then the original protocol will be fully restored, and no further updates will be required,” explained Murray.

If the protocol is set in stone, what exactly is it?

Murray says he came up with a “guiding North Star” to determine this.

“I thought about what documentation someone would need if they came along and wanted to create a node implementation from scratch. What would they need so they’d be able to communicate with other nodes? I considered that, identified the various elements, and began documenting them. I’ll admit that getting everyone to agree on this is still a challenge. After all, I’m a human, and so is everybody else involved.”

What if someone tries to change the protocol?

“My role is to do nothing. Bitcoin is a distributed network of nodes, and the BSVA simply defines it. If someone came along with a lot of hash power and tried to change it, I’d expect to see honest nodes ignore that and continue on the remaining chain,” said Murray.

“The Bitcoin white paper says nodes have a duty to reject malicious activity. I’d expect them to do so since changing the protocol is an example of malicious activity,” added Wuckert, giving the example of gold: you can call something else gold, but its atomic properties define it. He believes BTC developers have fundamentally changed Bitcoin so that it can no longer be described as Bitcoin while they may use the ticker and the name.

Is there an active release date for the Chronicle update?

“I thought it would have been released already. However, after releasing it for private testing, some parties had concerns about transaction malleability. Developers have many opinions on this issue, and some of the proposed changes would reintroduce it. Hence, the BSVA took a different approach, allowing people to choose what they want to do,” answered Murray.

Answering a related question about whether the update might break wallets like ElectrumSV that developers are no longer maintaining, Murray says it won’t if they use BSVA open-source libraries. However, there may be some lag between the release and when they update.

Is this update a hard fork, and will there be a new coin if so?

“I do define the update as a hard fork, but there’ll be no new coin. You can liken it to the Back to Genesis update. Once this one is implemented, no further changes must be made, and the original protocol will be restored,” explained Murray.

Did the original Bitcoin have a block size limit?

“There was no block size limit when Satoshi Nakamoto released Bitcoin. Hal Finney and some others convinced him to temporarily implement one due to concerns about DDoS attacks and some other security concerns. It was supposed to be a temporary measure, but a group took over the project and decided it should be permanent,” said Murray.

What is the significance of stablecoins on BSV?

“While I’m a hard money advocate personally, I believe stablecoins are one of the major things we have been missing. Most users don’t care about this or that coin but instead want cheap, fast, reliable transactions in a stable currency like the USD. Add in the possibility of micropayments, and this is a big deal,” answered Murray.

Murray signs off, saying the Town Hall is on Thursday, January 30, at 11 AM ET. It will cover the Chronicle update in more detail and will be recorded for those who don’t catch it live.