Bitcoin SV Developer Week: 3 most watched presentations of 2020

In preparation for this year's edition of Bitcoin SV Developers Week, or Bitcoin SV DevCon 2021, we’ve tallied up the scores to determine the most popular presentations of 2020.

Here they are, ranked by the number of views, starting with the highest. 

The most-watched Bitcoin developers presentations of 2020

1. Demystifying the utility of Bitcoin Script

The 2020 Bitcoin SV DevCon presentation that drew the most views was a practical session where Steve Shadders, Technical Director of the Bitcoin SV Infrastructure Team, walked us through the basics of Bitcoin Script .

Why was Script the language chosen to embody Bitcoin’s smart contract capabilities ? 

Shadders explains by drawing a parallel between Bitcoin and tiny, resource-constrained embedded systems - even though the Bitcoin network is designed to be run by miners in massive data centres with plenty of resources. 

He admits that Bitcoin developers experience the code as difficult to read and horrible to debug. To improve the situation, he demonstrates a tool to Bitcoin script sleeker, more readable and efficient. Though the tool is still in the prototype phase, Shadders hopes to launch it to the public later in 2021.

⏰ Time Stamps ⏰

01:06 Why Script for Bitcoin?

02:31 The similarity between Bitcoin and embedded systems

04:44 Script hacking for fun and profit 

17:00 What is a stack?

18:14 Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) demo

29:46 Compile-time vs runtime demo

36:06 Script language features demo

40:37 The use of variables demo

45:29 How to add loops to the script demo

47:25 While loops demo

55:46 Q&A

 

2. How Bitcoin’s economic incentives secure the network

One of the game-changing aspects of Bitcoin is the system of economic incentives that causes it to spontaneously form into a robust and useful system that everyone in the world can depend on.

In this presentation, Bitcoin Association training and development manager Brendan Lee gave the participants of the inaugural Bitcoin SV DevCon an overview of the function of nodes on the BSV network and the role of economics in Bitcoin’s game-changing incentive system.

 

⏰ Time Stamps ⏰

00:53 ​ Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

04:23 ​ Set of steps to run network

05:32 ​ Step 1: New transactions are broadcast to all nodes

08:33 ​ Step 2: Each node collects new transactions into a block

12:11 ​ Step 3: Each node works on finding a difficult proof-of-work for its block

15:44 ​ Step 4: When a node finds a proof of work, it broadcasts the block to all nodes

23:00 ​ Step 5: Nodes accept the block only if all transactions in it are valid and not already spent

28:30 ​ Step 6: Nodes express their acceptance of the block by working on creating the next block in the chain, using the hash of the accepted block as the previous hash

29:53 ​ Summary

 

3. Bitcoin Miner Fee Calculation and Merchant API (mAPI)

In this top three presentation, nChain R&D software engineer Jad Wahab talked about Merchant API (mAPI) , a new tool for the Bitcoin SV network.mAPI is an interface that lets merchants connect directly with Bitcoin nodes or miners.Merchant API makes it easy for nodes to offer tailored services to merchants (or users), making peer-to-peer transactions easier in the process.

 

⏰ Time Stamps ⏰

00:18 What is MAPI?

01:23 Why is MAPI important?

06:50 The role of nodes in preventing double-spends

13:14 Security vs usability

18:25 Double spends - Theory vs Practice

20:27 Additional security via MAPI - double spend alerts

23:42 Merkle proofs

25:40 Real-time notifications

16:38 nLockTime transaction storage

27:57 Miners and nodes vs transaction processors

30:05 MAPI to enable Teranode scaling

31:33 How does MAPI work?

32:24 The MAPI interface

33:28 Data Flow - BIP270/PayMail

35:15 Miner ID

37:46 JSON envelope BRFC

39:56 Fee Spec BRFC

40:17 Deterministic transaction fee calculation

41:11 Fee types

42:32 How do I use MAPI?

 

Bitcoin SV DevCon 2021

Bitcoin SV DevCon 2021 is coming up in May. If you’ve found the top presentations of 2020 valuable, you’re sure to benefit from attending. You can secure your spot by registering over here .