随着契约的肆虐，比特币开发者争论僵化与创新

比特币开发者再次争论协议中的僵化与创新。这场争论已经持续多年，但现在已经达到白热化程度

Bitcoin developers are once again debating the trade-offs between ossification and innovation in the protocol. This debate has been ongoing for several years, but is now reaching a fever pitch as discussions about covenants rage on.

比特币开发者再次争论协议中的僵化和创新之间的权衡。这场争论已经持续了好几年，但随着有关圣约的讨论愈演愈烈，现在已经达到了白热化的程度。

At issue is whether core developers should proceed with a new soft fork to enable covenants. Several covenant proposals are now in circulation, ranging in scope from narrow to broad.

问题在于核心开发人员是否应该继续进行新的软分叉以启用契约。目前有几项契约提案正在流传，其范围从狭义到广泛。

Covenants would allow bitcoin users to share unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs). Currently, individual users have access to their own UTXO. But as the cost of transacting on the base layer increases over time due to higher transaction fees, it will become more expensive for individuals to afford bitcoin transactions. If multiple people can share a UTXO, they can split the cost of transacting across the group, allowing more users to access the base layer.

契约将允许比特币用户共享未使用的交易输出（UTXO）。目前，个人用户可以访问自己的 UTXO。但由于交易费用较高，基础层的交易成本随着时间的推移而增加，个人承担比特币交易的成本将变得更加昂贵。如果多个人可以共享一个 UTXO，他们就可以分摊整个组的交易成本，从而允许更多用户访问基础层。

One simple application of a covenant would be a payment pool, which allows a group of users to share a UTXO and thereby allocate shares among each other seamlessly. Another application of covenants would be vaults, which would allow you to claw back bitcoin after you have sent it, by temporarily placing the bitcoin in a vault where it sits for a fixed amount of time before finally reaching its destination address. Perhaps the most extreme soft-fork proposal at the moment is OP_CAT, which is the concatenation operator in Bitcoin script. Satoshi disabled this in the early years of Bitcoin to deliberately restrict the capabilities of Bitcoin scripting. That is on the table as well, which would enable covenants along with all manner of innovations.

契约的一个简单应用是支付池，它允许一组用户共享 UTXO，从而在彼此之间无缝分配份额。契约的另一个应用是金库，它允许您在发送比特币后收回比特币，方法是暂时将比特币放入金库中，在金库中保存一段固定的时间，然后最终到达目的地地址。也许目前最极端的软分叉提案是 OP_CAT，它是比特币脚本中的串联运算符。中本聪在比特币诞生之初就禁用了这一功能，以故意限制比特币脚本的功能。这也已摆在桌面上，这将使契约和各种创新成为可能。

The case for covenants is being made by those who wish to expand Bitcoin into new use cases via new second layers and to revive innovation in the Bitcoin ecosystem, allowing for new use cases to develop that would in turn attract new users and thus new demand for bitcoin. This all sounds great in theory, doesn’t it? And who would ever oppose innovation?

那些希望通过新的第二层将比特币扩展到新用例并重振比特币生态系统创新的人提出了契约的理由，允许新用例的开发，从而吸引新用户，从而吸引新的需求比特币。这在理论上听起来很棒，不是吗？谁会反对创新呢？

But the truth is more nuanced. Believe it or not, innovation can come at a cost. Bitcoin is on the cusp of attracting trillions of dollars more capital from institutional investors. That capital, more than anything else, is seeking the safest and most sound digital asset. That capital will do more to drive up long-term bitcoin demand than any innovation that we can foresee in the future. And that capital would be at risk if innovation on the base layer had unforeseen second-order effects.

但事实更为微妙。不管你相信与否，创新是有代价的。比特币即将从机构投资者那里吸引数万亿美元的资金。这些资本最重要的是寻求最安全、最健全的数字资产。这些资本将比我们未来可以预见的任何创新更能推动比特币的长期需求。如果基础层的创新产生不可预见的二阶效应，那么这些资本就会面临风险。

The last two major upgrades to Bitcoin (SegWit and Taproot) were marketed to help with the development of the Lightning Network (by solving the problem of transaction malleability) and enabling more complex financial transactions on Bitcoin. For better or worse, they did open the door for ordinals and inscriptions, whose primary use was to bring NFTs to Bitcoin. Even the most ardent proponents of Taproot and SegWit would not have predicted ordinals and inscriptions. Sure, this attracted new demand from artists who wished to mint their images on Bitcoin as data, but it proves my point that there are always second-order effects from innovation.

比特币的最后两次重大升级（SegWit 和 Taproot）旨在帮助闪电网络的发展（通过解决交易延展性问题）并在比特币上实现更复杂的金融交易。无论好坏，它们确实为序数和铭文打开了大门，其主要用途是将 NFT 引入比特币。即使是 Taproot 和 SegWit 最热心的支持者也不会预测序数和铭文。当然，这吸引了那些希望将自己的图像作为数据铸造在比特币上的艺术家的新需求，但这证明了我的观点，即创新总是存在二阶效应。

That innovation is fine on second layers or even on altcoins, but the base layer is the foundation of the entire system. It is crucial to keep that foundation strong. This ultimately reflects my own belief that the primary use case of Bitcoin is sound money. The soundness derives from the inability to change the supply schedule. The biggest difference between the Bitcoin blockchain and the Federal Open Market Committee is that the FOMC changes its mind every six weeks, while the Bitcoin schedule has remained the same since the genesis block.

这种创新在第二层甚至山寨币上都很好，但基础层是整个系统的基础。保持这个基础牢固至关重要。这最终反映了我自己的信念，即比特币的主要用例是健全的货币。稳健性源于无法改变供应计划。比特币区块链和联邦公开市场委员会最大的区别在于，联邦公开市场委员会每六周改变一次主意，而比特币的时间表自创世区块以来一直保持不变。

No developer is suggesting changing the supply schedule, but even advocating for soft forks erodes the primary value proposition of Bitcoin: that it is immutable and unchangeable. It’s a slippery slope that isn’t worth taking. As the soft-fork proposals do not directly advance the sound money aspects of Bitcoin, they are not worth the risk.

没有开发者建议改变供应计划，但即使倡导软分叉也会侵蚀比特币的主要价值主张：它是不可变的和不可改变的。这是一个不值得走的滑坡。由于软分叉提案并没有直接推进比特币的健全货币方面，因此不值得冒这个风险。