Bitcoin's Next Big Software Upgrade to Feature New Language for Crypto Keys

Of particular emphasis is improving the software's default wallet, where user's bitcoin private keys are stored.

Perhaps the most interesting update is the debut of a new "Language," initially proposed by prominent bitcoin contributor Pieter Wuille, known for designing some of the most radical changes to bitcoin in recent years.

With this in mind, Wuille's new language aims to tags each key in bitcoin with a "Label" that describes what can unlock it, "Changing the way we think about wallets," Chaincode engineer John Newbery said in a talk describing the upcoming release.

One of the easiest ways to use a hardware wallet is to leave it offline, but then connect it to a software wallet on a mobile device that makes it easy to actually make transactions.

The problem is that usually each hardware wallet only includes support for one or two software wallets.

As wallets pick up this standard, it will make Bitcoin Core in particular a bit easier to use because hardware wallets will easily be able to connect to the software.

"PSBT will enable Bitcoin Core to more easily support hardware wallets and have better offline, airgapped wallet setups. I'm actually working on hardware wallet support for Bitcoin Core by using PSBT," Chow told CoinDesk, going as far as to argue that Bitcoin Core is a much safer way to use bitcoin than other software wallets.

Once Bitcoin Core supports hardware wallets, users can use Bitcoin Core instead, and because it is a full node, the user does not need to trust a third party that the everything has been verified correctly," he said.

"A few releases ago, we introduced the ability to use multiple wallets in Bitcoin Core. However, that required starting Bitcoin Core configured for multiple wallets. Now, we can load, unload, and create wallets when the software is already running," Chow said.

Especially since few people use bitcoin and even fewer use Bitcoin Core.