Steve Shadders: Bitcoin SV wallet workshop creates ‘huge amount of momentum’

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The first ever Bitcoin Association Wallet Workshop, held the week of February 18, was a huge success, resulting in serious progress for Bitcoin SV (BSV) wallet technology. Steve Shadders, director of solutions and engineering at nChain, joined CoinGeek.com’s Becky Liggero to talk about the event and its implications.

Amidst the progress made in code and potential new applications produced, Shadders recognizes something intangible that’s come out of the workshop. “I think the biggest takeaway that we actually had from the week, that’s not a concrete deliverable, is the atmosphere in this workshop is actually one of the most productive that I’ve ever seen in my lifetime in Bitcoin space, and even outside the Bitcoin space,” he said. Shadders explained why he thinks the group is so cohesive:

“And I think that’s largely because when the Bitcoin SV project started last year, we were very clear in the months leading up to November 15 that Bitcoin SV was all about restoring the protocol to its original form and locking it down. And everyone who is now involved in Bitcoin SV is clear on that message, they all agree on that message. We’ve literally got nothing left to disagree about. So we’re spending all of our time focusing on building on top of the Bitcoin protocol and improving the user experience.”

The tangible results are there though, and they will make a difference in BSV’s utility. “One of the outcomes is a new version of BIP 70, which is a payment protocol that describes how a wallet and a merchant can interact to establish the parameters of a transaction and create the transaction and get it sent out to the Bitcoin network,” Shadders explained. “And that solves a bunch of problems for us, including making the user experience a lot more seamless, as well as improving 0-conf, or instant transaction security, which is one of our key goals.”

The momentum and team spirit the workshop created will be key as well. “Now because we’ve got, probably a majority of the wallet ecosystem here, and everybody on board with this idea, and they’re all very keen to get back and start implementing it, that’s going to create a huge amount of momentum within the Bitcoin SV ecosystem,” he said. “It’s probably one of the biggest achievements I think that we’ve seen in Bitcoin SV’s history.”

Now that everyone agrees the wallet workshop was a huge success, Shadders expects we’ll see it much more often. “I initially was planning on this event maybe being a once or twice a year event,” he noted. “In the course of the last few days, I’ve upgraded that to four times a year. I’ve already been in touch with the sponsors of this event and made that suggestion, and they’re 100% on board with it as well.”

Just like Bitcoin SV, Shadders expects future workshops to start scaling too. “We’ve made so much progress in this week just by having everybody in one room, next time maybe we’ll cast the net wider and have more people participating,” he told Liggero. “I want to see more of this progress because it helps Bitcoin SV move forward in leaps and bounds.”

The type of work done at the workshop will be a major focus of “Developer Day,” May 29 at the CoinGeek Toronto scaling conference. If you want to be part of the crowd that helps decide the winner, get your tickets now, and save money by using Bitcoin SV via Coingate.