Consensus Change Standards — my legal and technical framework for Bitcoin protocol governance — is out in a Fourth Edition. It's a 20-point scorecard for whether a proposed change to Bitcoin's rules is ready to activate, plus the legal exposure a rushed one can create. A few key changes this edition: • A two-page Summary for Policymakers up front • SegWit2x added as a third scored example, alongside Taproot and BIP-110 • Chain-split risk tied to the standard math — a computable cliff • Expanded legal analysis under California law (developer and mining-pool-operator duties) Free PDF, 98 pages: https://github.com/asaffulks/consensus-change-standards/raw/main/consensus_change_standards_v4.pdf

Not your keys, not your coins — and not your heirs' coins either, unless they can find the keys. A will doesn't solve it. "My family knows" doesn't solve it. It has to be documented: where the seed lives, the passphrase, the multisig config, and how your executor actually moves it. I'm a California attorney who runs a node, mines, and holds my own keys. I wrote a free Bitcoin Inheritance Kit to close that gap: • Custody audit checklist • Heir letter (plain English) • Digital asset memorandum (a real legal instrument) • Executor technical guide • Tax summary (stepped-up basis) • Shamir's Secret Sharing guide • Node & mining estate planning 8 editable docs. Free. No email, no paywall. https://asaffulkslaw.com/bitcoin-estate-planning/ If it's not documented, it's lost. (Educational, not legal advice; the legal template is California-drafted.)

Bitcoin has no formal standard for deciding whether a consensus change is ready to activate. Consensus Change Standards proposes one — a 20-criterion readiness scorecard across proposal quality, code quality, activation safety, and community process. Scored against three proposals: Taproot — 17/17 applicable. Green. Activated November 2021 after nearly four years of review; no chain split. BIP-110 — 3/20. Red. A 55% threshold and roughly six weeks from proposal to activation client. SegWit2x — ≈6/17. Red. The 2017 block-size hard fork backed by miners and major exchanges, withdrawn for lack of consensus. The scorecard measures how a change was advanced, not whether it should be — the same standards apply to any proposal, in either direction. It flags the restriction and the expansion alike. "Six weeks is not a review period. It is a rush to deployment." "Fortune is not a governance strategy." Third Edition. A legal and technical framework for Bitcoin protocol governance. https://github.com/asaffulks/consensus-change-standards/raw/main/consensus_change_standards_v3.1.pdf