Resolves YES if any official release of the Bitcoin Core software made in 2024 includes code that may, after at least one month (or 4,000 blocks) has passed since its release, begin enforcing a more restrictive set of consensus rules (a "soft fork") than Bitcoin Core 26.0 (which was the latest release at the time the market opened).
NB: this market is only about the release of code in 2024 that can support a soft fork. It doesn't matter what conditions need to be fulfilled for the fork to activate or when it might activate (even if that's after 2024) or even if it's clear in 2024 that the soft fork code included in a Bitcoin Core 2024 release won't activate. As long as Bitcoin Core includes code in a 2024 release that may tighten the consensus rules, this market will resolve YES.
Terms
"Bitcoin Core" is the software available at https://bitcoincore.org/ . If the website becomes unavailable or no longer seems to be in control of the active Bitcoin Core developers for an extended period of time, I will update this definition.
"Any official release" will include any version of Bitcoin Core released at the above website and for which there are valid GPG signatures from at least three long-term contributors (for comparison, the 26.0 release has nine signatures, see https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-26.0/SHA256SUMS.asc ).
"Soft fork" is a set of consensus rules that are more restrictive than the previous set of consensus rules.
"Non-emergency" means there is at least one month between the "official release" of the software (as defined above) and the earliest time the new consensus rules can go into effect. Some activation mechanisms may use block height rather than time, so 4,000 blocks from release to earliest activation will also indicate a non-emergency soft fork. For comparison, the most recent non-emergency soft fork (taproot) had an approximately six month minimum lead time, whereas the most emergency change to the consensus rules (CVE-2018-17144) had zero lead (updated nodes began enforcing the fixed rules immediately).
"2024" shall be the year ending at 2024-12-31 11:59 UTC.
I strongly intend to resolve this market as YES or NO. Resolution to PROB or N/A shall only be used if something very unanticipated happens.
I will trade in this market, but some of my trades may not to maximize my returns but rather to stimulate activity (since directly subsidizing markets is currently taxed at 33%).
Just stumbled on this related market, although note that it's terms are different than this market (that market resolves YES if activation is clear; this market resoles YES if a particular implementation may activate. It seems highly likely, but certainly not guaranteed, that a YES in that market would result in a YES in this market, but not necessarily vice versa).