Ordinals BIP PR

The email exchange discusses the process of promoting draft proposals to Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs). The sender mentions that proposals-in-development remain in a draft/discussion state until certain conditions are met. These conditions include the author(s) considering the proposal final and wanting to promote it to a BIP, enough non-author interactions with the draft, and no other drafts existing that fulfill the first two conditions and seek the next available BIP ordinal.

The purpose of these conditions is to ensure the quality of the proposals by reputation and through multiple interactions with the community. However, there are risks involved, such as expectations, experience, and ego influencing the promotion decision, heated discussions on irrelevant topics, and spam inflating interactions. To avoid concurrency issues and fights over esoteric numbers, it is important to have a systematic methodology for promoting drafts. This can be done in batches at specific block numbers or at regular difficulty adjustments.

The sender suggests that in an ideal world, proposers should be able to self-manage the promotion process. However, in realistic scenarios, BIP maintainers can moderate and protect the process. They also mention the possibility of changing the condition of "interactions" to "enough non-authors considering the proposal final" to ensure more quality by encouraging co-responsibility. However, this would require a new approval process, which may be more cumbersome than relying on authors and defining required levels of community engagement.

In response to the discussion, Peter Todd raises questions about the purpose of using numbers for BIPs if they are not memorable. He suggests that people could publish their ideas on their own web pages and decide on names for those ideas on a case-by-case basis. He argues that a functioning BIP system inherently involves centralized human gatekeepers who apply standards to approve BIPs, and it is impossible to avoid this centralization if a BIP system is desired.

Overall, the email exchange highlights the process and challenges of promoting draft proposals to BIPs, emphasizing the importance of quality control and community engagement while acknowledging the limitations and potential centralization of the system.