The Bitcoin Operations Technology Group (Bitcoin Optech) has been launched by a team of Bitcoin or BTC engineers. The primary objective behind the formation of the group is to address the issues related to the scalability of Bitcoin.
Wences Casares, a board member of PayPal, John Pfeffer, an executive of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co Ltd, and Chaincode Labs, a group supporting cryptocurrency research and development are some of the leading industry players who are backing the non-profit organization called Bitcoin Optech. It has already connected more than 20 industry leaders in their project. Some of the notable names also include BitGo, Square, and Coinbase.
Bitcoin Optech has taken a multi-pronged approach. Even though it has started as a non-profit organization, it has already identified the key technical issues prevailing in the Bitcoin industry.
Currently, the Bitcoin Optech is focusing on the technical operations like batch transaction processing, SegWit usage, coin selection as well as on fees estimation. The venture will help companies to integrate cryptocurrency into their business operations by using various rapidly growing technologies.
The group members are from various companies operating under the Bitcoin network. Some of them are open source application developers. Bitcoin Optech is aiming to resolve the scalability issues by increasing collaborations among the people who are interested to join hand for the Bitcoin industry or are interested to learn about Bitcoin technologies. They are planning to develop and run an online forum to connect Bitcoin engineers and developers so that the technical issues can be addressed. Further, they have also planned to publish weekly newsletters, arranging workshops for Bitcoin engineers and other enthusiasts. The first workshop was held in the San Francisco that focuses on the scalability issues. Other than that, the organization is also working on the issues related to fee estimation and coin selection.
Lightning Network (LN) is a proposed solution to the scalability issue related to Bitcoin. The scalability issue is raised because of the continuous growth of the number of transactions in the Bitcoin network. Lightning Network adds an additional layer that offers secure payment options using the blockchain based transactions.
According to a recent study, even though the co-founders of Lightning refuted that the Network may lack efficiency in cases of routing payments, the problem persists. According to the co-founders who are also BTC developers, LN is still in beta testing phase.
CoinGate, the leading crypto payment gateway has launched a pilot program in mid of the July with the aim to test a variant of Lightning Network for 100 merchants for their services.
Bitcoin Optech has also clarified their goal by announcing that they are not any ‘Bitcoin Foundation’. According to them,
“We’re not a Bitcoin foundation. We’re just engineers and contributors who care about Bitcoin and want to see it succeed.”
They neither represent Bitcoin Core and they don’t represent any Bitcoin company. They are just a group of people who care about the Bitcoin industry and it’s potential. The crypto ecosystem being developed by the Bitcoin Optech group is hoping to build a collaborative atmosphere and to help companies in leveraging the potential of Bitcoins.
