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That's what I'm trying to wrap my head around. I'm trying to get educated enough to form a solid opinion, that way I can make a case for whatever I think the best solution is.
The bottleneck is consensus, so I should be trying to convince people to reach one, and I can't do that unless I know what I'm talking about lol.
I agree. The covenants soft fork support wiki is a site I visit with some regularity:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Covenants_support
There is also this covenants page: https://covenants.info/
But I definitely have a similar feeling to what you are expressing here: I don't know how to make up my mind about it, but it feels like if I don't have a single strong opinion -- if a lot of us don't have single strong opinions -- nothing will happen.
There has been a bit of movement recently though: BIP 54 (Great Consensus Cleanup) while not a covenant proposal, is a soft fork that maybe has the most cohesive narrative around it. It has a signet (#1428059) and there have even been some BIP 54 compatible blocks mined on mainnet (#1442475).
BIP 440 and co aka The Great Script Restoration is another soft fork proposal that is starting to get some momentum -- at least it has BIPs that are published.
A number of the other proposals on the wiki I mentioned above have also published BIPs that are now included in the BIPs repo, including BIP 346 - OP_TXHASH, BIP 448 - Rebindable Transactions, BIP 446 - OP_TEMPLATEHASH, and BIP 442 - OP_PAIR COMMIT.
But maybe this proves the point: there are so many proposals out there, it is difficult for a non-expert to develop a strong opinion about which one should be advocated for.
I think this means the answer to the question in your post is: No. there is not consensus on SN about soft fork proposals.
I don't think any of those address the quantum threat, but if bitcoin needs ro take baby steps, it's fine. So long as those steps are actually taken in a timely manner. Looks like I have a lot of reading to do though.
I'm going to keep at it until I've made up my mind what solution I want to champion lol. So I'll make mu case eventually.
I'm very glad you are bringing this up!
I have a feeling that many people on SN don't feel like they understand the details and trade offs of the various covenants soft fork proposals well enough to have a strong opinion.
At least, this is how I would put it in my own case -- and this is despite the fact that I've done a fair bit of reading about them and paying attention to the conversation on the Mailing List and on delving.
I suspect the problem is that a lot of the trade-offs are pretty nitty gritty. It feels like what we want is some champion who will tell us what to do...but unfortunately, it's Bitcoin and we don't like champions.
Also, any champion who emerges, is usually flawed in some way and so we obviously cannot trust them. (we probably shouldn't be trusting anyone!)
But where does that leave people like us?
Either we are going to have to really put the time in and educate ourselves, or we are going to have to wait for "the devs" to present some semi-unified front.
I'm a fan of the former. I'll try to write a post about covenants this week.