According to Cointelegraph, a heated panel discussion took place at the Bitcoin Amsterdam conference, where long-time Bitcoin developers Paul Sztorc and Peter Todd debated improvement proposals (BIPs) for the Bitcoin protocol. Sztorc's LayerTwo Labs has been working on BIP-300 for nearly six years, which advocates for the creation of layer two sidechains to address various issues without requiring base layer changes to the Bitcoin protocol. The debate highlighted the difficulty in reaching a consensus over BIPs that could potentially improve the overall functionality of the Bitcoin protocol.

Jameson Lopp, co-founder and CTO of Bitcoin custody firm Casa, weighed in on the issue during an interview with Cointelegraph at the conference. He expressed concern that the velocity of improvements and protocol changes has slowed down more than he would have liked. However, Lopp noted that recent projects like BitVM and SpiderChain have led him to believe that a couple of proposed soft forks may be beneficial to the future of the protocol. Lopp also argued that any potential 'hardcore ossification' that some maximalists have advocated for in the past would have stifled innovation, such as the creation of the Lightning Network that has helped the Bitcoin network scale to better process transactions.

Lopp believes that if Bitcoin does not continue to scale, users will inevitably turn to storing and using BTC through a 'handful of Bitcoin banks, aka custodians and exchanges', which comes with significant trade-offs. He added that while Bitcoin's protocol may become static due to a lack of consensus over base layer improvement proposals, developers are likely to keep building in ways that don't require permissions.