How much the code in Bitcoin protocol changed in 2024?

[fillippone]

Hello,
I am absolutely not a technical person, but I stumbled in this slide from River:





276,000 changes in line of codes seems a very high number to me.

According to ChatGPT:

The Bitcoin protocol consists of several components, mainly the Bitcoin Core client, which is the reference implementation. As of recent updates, Bitcoin Core has around 600,000 to 700,000 lines of code, depending on the version.

This means that in 2024 almost 40% of the code changed.
This seems a lot to me, is this information reliable? How can I verify this?

[She shining]

This means that in 2024 almost 40% of the code changed.
This seems a lot to me, is this information reliable? How can I verify this?

You can verify this from their github repository https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin and clicking on insight(click on the... at the top corner if it's not visible) would grant access to various data.
What you need should be in code frequency but github limits visualization for massive projects like Bitcoin.

So you can check on contributors and it would show their commits( saved file of changes).
Specify the duration to let's say 12 months and you can see their commit and to check manually. Click on their profile and you would see some project they have worked on. Click on Bitcoin Core and select the Year. Yes quite time consuming but the essence is to show that it's indeed possible for such changes to have been made not to verify everything.

If it's still not clear. I could use image though.

[ABCbits]

That PDF screenshot have misleading information.
1. Not all lines of code on Bitcoin Core manage Bitcoin protocol, some of them have different usage (such as wallet management and how blockchain data is stored locally).
2. A Bitcoin Core developer state over 70% activity is related with maintenance[1].
3. With Ctrl-F, i unable to find mention whether "Over 276,000" include comment (rather than actual code) and refactor (rewrite the code without change on it's behavior).

And in narrow sense, Taproot was most recent major protocol change.

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/02/23/can-bitcoin-afford-to-maintain-its-core-network-coindesk

[pooya87]

The protocol itself can only change through a fork (soft or hard fork) and we have only had about a dozen of them so far in the past 16 years, from BIP-16 (P2SH) all the way to BIP-341-342-343 (Taproot).

[MeGold666]

3. With Ctrl-F, i unable to find mention whether "Over 276,000" include comment (rather than actual code) and refactor (rewrite the code without change on it's behavior).

Since the Bitcoin protocol is written in stone, they at least have to pretend they're doing something.



They all have two things in common: they changed the world, and they are outdated.