On Ossification

Jameson Lopp argues that Bitcoin should not proactively ossify its protocol and should instead keep adopting careful, consensus-driven base-layer improvements. He contends that ossification is inevitable as networks grow, but that freezing development now would hamper permissionless second-layer development, citing covenants, vaults, and payment pools as features needing base-layer changes. He notes that Lightning Network required three different soft forks to enable its building blocks. The text also presents an ossifier case, including the claim that Bitcoin has grown from $0 to $1.4 trillion in market cap in 15 years.