“Where is the public roadmap for Bitcoin Core?”
This sentiment from Zach is common and Ill give my own thoughts on it
https://x.com/zachherbert/status/1976726178376696016
The subprojects that individual Bitcoin Core engineers contribute to reflect the project’s software development priorities which can include things like testing improvements, refactors, features, maintenance, or performance improvements.
These software engineering efforts are distinct from the Bitcoin protocol, whose consensus rules change only through broad community agreement and network adoption, not by decisions made exclusively within the Bitcoin Core repository.
If I were looking to derive a shorter term “public roadmap for Bitcoin Core” (again, the Bitcoin Core software, not Bitcoin protocol), there are a few places to look.
Working Groups
Contributors actively working on similar efforts form working groups to implement and review projects in Bitcoin Core. A list of the current working groups is on the Bitcoin Core Wiki:
https://github.com/bitcoin-core/bitcoin-devwiki/wiki/Working-Groups#current-working-groups
From here we can see interest in: Erlay, Fuzzing, Kernel, Benchmarking, Silent Payments, Cluster Mempool, Stratum v2, Multiprocess, QML GUI, and Net Split
These working groups also provide updates at the weekly Bitcoin Core developer meetings on IRC: https://bitcoincore.org/en/meetings/ This is another place to see current work.
Tracking issues
Many subprojects within Bitcoin Core have a place to track a todo list of code changes that roll up into that project.
Here are just a few examples (search the GitHub for “tracking issue” for more):
Multiprocess - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/28722
Mining interface - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/33777
MuSig2 - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/31246
Cluster mempool - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/30289
Erlay - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/30249
Bitcoin Kernel Library - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/27587
SENDTEMPLATE - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/33691
Core Dev meetups
What developers discuss at recent in-person meetings is another data point. Here are transcripts from the
October 2025 meeting - https://btctranscripts.com/bitcoin-core-dev-tech/2025-10
February 2025 meeting - https://btctranscripts.com/bitcoin-core-dev-tech/2025-02
Merged PRs
As code changes are merged into the Bitcoin Core GitHub before the next release you can see precisely what will be in the upcoming release. These code changes include PRs related to projects above, but also more general changes unrelated to a particular project, like maintenance work, additional testing, one-off features, etc.
Likewise Optech has a weekly notable code segment that picks interesting code merges to cover: https://bitcoinops.org/
Release Milestones
As Bitcoin Core progresses toward a new release, PRs can be tagged with a milestone representing that release.
For example, here are the items tagged for the previous v30 release:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls?q=is%3Apr+milestone%3A30.0
And here are considerations for the v31 release: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls?q=is%3Apr+milestone%3A31.0
TLDR, just tell me what will be in v31
Sorry, there isn’t a definitive authoritative answer for a decentralized open source project like this. But also in the spirit of decentralization, I can provide my own guesses of what might be in there.
Kernel API - modular use of Bitcoin’s consensus and validation logic outside the full node
MuSig2 (in wallet) - fee-efficient, privacy-preserving multi-signature support
Cluster mempool - makes transaction relay and block assembly more efficient, predictable, and network reliability.
ASMap - help diversify peer connections, strengthening network resilience against eclipse attacks
Static builds - reproducible, portable binaries that enhance security, verifiability, and ease of deployment
I’ll emphasize that while these projects took a ton of work to get where they are, there will also be a majority of PRs in v31 that will not be part of a “project”. They will simply be general improvements, bug fixes, and maintenance work (see https://x.com/bitschmidty/status/1976692672023667057 for examples)
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