Here's How to Inspect Bitcoin's Next Major Upgrade Yourself

As the bitcoin community gears up for its next likely major code upgrade, students of the cryptocurrency have an opportunity to inspect the changes themselves, with help from core developers.

The weekly Bitcoin Core review club has started guiding users through the proposed Taproot/Schnorr code, designed to improve privacy and scalability and boost smart-contract usage for the largest crypto by market cap.

Bitcoin's code is open-source, so anyone can scan proposed changes.

Reviewing code is one of the best ways new contributors can dip their toes into the complex world of making improvements to bitcoin at the base layer.

Developer John Newbery started the weekly club last year in an effort to teach more developers to review proposed changes to bitcoin's code.

A host usually starts the meeting with a description of a change, then lurkers jump in with questions to get a better idea of how the code works and the motivation behind it.

Newbery has been contributing to Bitcoin Core - the basic version of the bitcoin software from which other customized implementations are derived - since 2016.This week's inaugural Taproot/Schnoor chat covered "Some small changes to script [execution]" from two "Pull requests".

PRs are proposed changes that aren't quite ready to be added to bitcoin.

Once a PR is submitted, developers will look over it, to approve, reject, or leave feedback so the change can make it to the next step.

The club website does not say what pieces of the Taproot/Schnorr code will be covered next.