Bitcoin’s most straightforward scaling upgrade has been stuck for seven years, and developer Jeremy Rubin says the bottleneck isn’t technical - it’s social. On the Bitcoin Takeover Podcast, Rubin argues CheckTemplateVerify (CTV) failed because of a “paternalistic” dynamic where critics demanded an ever-shifting definition of “technical consensus.” He points to a 2022 Telegram exchange where key figures like Adam Back allegedly used FUD to demoralize supporters, despite backing from about 150 developers and researchers.
“The 2022 CTV activation effort failed due to paternalistic arguments about 'technical consensus' and targeted FUD, including a two-hour Andreas Antonopoulos podcast framing covenants as a government censorship tool.”
- Jeremy Rubin, Bitcoin Takeover Podcast
Rubin attributes this stagnation to a cultural hegemony. He argues Blockstream, a major Bitcoin infrastructure company, operates with an assumption of inherent technical supremacy, viewing outside innovation as a threat. Instead of supporting independent proposals like CTV, Rubin says Blockstream engineers proposed alternative paths that stalled progress for years, centralizing influence over a protocol built on decentralization.
The result is a builder’s dilemma. Without native on-chain primitives like covenants, engineers who want to create trust-minimized tools are forced onto centralized platforms or rival chains. Rubin warns this brain drain undermines Bitcoin’s cypherpunk mission, pushing talent toward environments like Bitcoin Cash or upcoming forks where they can actually ship code.
While core development is gridlocked, peripheral innovation continues. The Bitcoin Optech newsletters detail independent work on a zero-knowledge proof system for quantum emergency recovery and Toby Sharp’s project to codify Bitcoin’s consensus rules into 34 formal, semantic specifications. This work aims to break the cycle of relying solely on Bitcoin Core’s code as the de facto protocol, enabling true client diversity.
Meanwhile, the regulatory climate adds pressure. On TFTC, Marty Bent and Lauren Rodriguez detailed the criminal prosecution of Samourai Wallet developers, arguing it sets a precedent that holds developers liable for user actions. This legal threat further chills the environment for building privacy-preserving tools on Bitcoin.
Rubin is now working on Char, a decentralized staking protocol for Bitcoin layer 2s. He views such layer-2 research as a source of momentum, but the fundamental tension remains: Bitcoin’s social layer is proving harder to upgrade than its code.
“He observes a cultural antagonism towards Bitcoin being useful, where criticizing Ethereum is prioritized over evaluating positive technology progress within Bitcoin itself.”
- Jeremy Rubin, Bitcoin Takeover Podcast
