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- 3 takeaways from OPNEXT
Over 150 Bitcoin developers, miners, custodians, and institutions attended OPNEXT at Strategy this past week in Tysons, Virginia to discuss Bitcoin scaling. It was a 2-day sprint of technical presentations and curated discussions on Bitcoin’s past, present and future.
Here are our takeaways from the conference:
Tuesday Morning Opens
BTC $$85.5K 0% GOLD $3,232 0% MSTR $311 3.8% COIN $176 0% | MARA $12.95 3.5% CLSK $7.78 3.7% RIOT $7.01 0% CORZ $7.06 0% |
1. Soft fork discussion is not taboo anymore (at least among attendees)
It’s difficult to make any general statement about Bitcoin development, but it’s clear to us that Bitcoin developers are much more comfortable talking about soft forks than they were a year ago.
Has the Overton Window opened, or was it just the venue? Regardless, developers from a wide range of perspectives appear to be interested in productive discussion on technical proposals.
2. CTV + CSFS is the clear frontrunner
Jeremy Rubin kicked off the conference with a general overview of the soft fork he’s endorsing: BIPs 119 and 348 (CTV and CSFS). CTV was a clear favorite at OPNEXT 2025, and this time the specific soft fork proposal has grown to include another component called CHECKSIGFROMSTACK as well.
Even the more conservative voices in the room seemed agreeable to the proposal, which was brought up in several presentations.
The Great Consensus Cleanup–which does not have a formalized BIP, yet but has been revisited by Antoine Poinsot–also received significant interest, perhaps as an update before CTV + CSFS.
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3. Institutions & miners want developers to tell them what to do
Our spiciest takeaway from the conference was summarized by Ryan Gentry of Lightning Labs:
“We would love to support a proposal, we just need the core developers to get [something] together.”
Representatives from almost every stakeholder–from Bitwise to Anchorage to Coinbase–at the conference espoused similar sentiments: willingness to activate a soft fork should developers agree on something.
Chart of the Week
Who’s lending and how much? Galaxy Digital did the leg work and found the total crypto lending market sits just above $12 billion, down from a market high $35 billion in 2022.
Source: Galaxy Digital
Notable Quotes
“I think we’re in a bubble, because I brought up blocksize and nobody shouted at me”
“If Bitcoin doesn't change and upgrade, that's a failure mode”
“I think Bitcoin is absolutely fine if we do nothing. It’s going to suck for a lot of people, but it’s fine as an economic system”
“The first rule about DoS blocks is you do not talk about DoS blocks”
-CBS & CMH
P.S. If you were at OPNEXT, reply with a takeaway and we’ll use it for a future newsletter!