The feud between Bitcoin users and developers

Chapter 0 Introduction

The world's top talents have a problem: fame or profit? If a professor at MIT develops a technology, he has two choices: one is to apply for a patent and then find someone to start a company and make a lot of money; the other is to make his experiment public, write a paper, and try to win a Nobel Prize. But these two are in conflict, and you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Fame and profit are very important to everyone, and Bitcoin developers are no exception. In the current situation, as an open source Bitcoin project, are developers doing it for fame or for profit?

Chapter 1: Seniority Ranking for Bitcoin Practitioners

For the Bitcoin industry, if we have to rank contributions based on seniority, then Satoshi Nakamoto is the natural choice to sit on the Iron Throne. The runner-up? If I were the judging committee, I would give it to the Bitcoin development team. Of course, this is a vague group, not an entity, and does not have any legal person.

Developers are the most important people who maintain and improve the Bitcoin network. They are the engineers of the Bitcoin network. Without them, Bitcoin would definitely not be as glorious as it is today.

After Satoshi Nakamoto withdrew from Bitcoin development, the Core development team led by Gavin made many upgrades to Bitcoin, such as adding multi-signatures and optimizing signature scripts. These contributions are very significant. The development team also took the lead when bugs appeared in the Bitcoin network. For example, when the Bitcoin QT 0.8 and 0.7 versions were incompatible and caused a hard fork in the blockchain, it was Gavin who stepped forward to organize the community to solve the problem. Another example is that when an accident occurred during the BIP 68 soft fork, which led to a hard fork in the block, it was the Core development team that issued a notice to organize miners to return to mining and resolve the disagreement.

It can be said that developers’ contribution to Bitcoin is irreplaceable.

What about the second place? I want to give the third place trophy to the miners.

The computing power is the fortress that protects the security of Bitcoin. Miners are people who use their own capital and wisdom to gamble on the price of Bitcoin. Although the starting point is to make a profit, it cannot cover up the security of Bitcoin that miners have made. Self-interest is the driving force of common gains. The design of Bitcoin is to form a computing power wall to protect the security of Bitcoin through the selfish behavior of each miner. In the CPU mining period, Bitcoin was very fragile and the cost of attacking Bitcoin was very low. Later, a large number of Chinese people intervened, especially the mining machines brought by Pumpkin Zhang, Baked Cat, QQagent, etc., which made extraordinary contributions to the security of Bitcoin.

Finally, there are a large number of companies and Bitcoin holders in the Bitcoin economic ecosystem. This group gives value to Bitcoin, or discovers the value of Bitcoin. It is an extremely loose group. Although the group contributes a lot to the value of Bitcoin, the individual has almost no impact. This is a phenomenon of value emergence after a certain number of individuals accumulate. This group is also profit-oriented.

Chapter 2: Bitcoin developers are the only ones who are unclear about fame and profit

Apart from the disappeared god Satoshi Nakamoto, among the above-mentioned groups, only the development team does not have a clear goal of fame and profit. Miners and users are all for profit. But the scary thing is not what the goal is, the key is that with a clear goal, miners and users are responsible for their own profits and losses. Miners will not blame others if they lose money when buying mining machines, and users will only hate their own poor skills if they lose money when speculating in cryptocurrencies. But what about the development team?

Why do Bitcoin developers write code? I'd rather not ask this question, but once I asked it, I've been looking for the answer for more than two years and I'm still confused! This group is so weird.

There is no good income prospect for developers’ labor. Bitcoin is an open source code and developers cannot directly monetize the code.

The root of Bitcoin's development and growth, which was designed by Satoshi Nakamoto that "the benefits of participating in Bitcoin legally by abiding by the rules outweigh the benefits that can be gained by breaking the rules," cannot be reflected in Bitcoin developers.

Currently, many Bitcoin developers earn their income from salaries provided by companies. For example, the famous Blockstream company employs many Core development team members, and Chinese companies also provide funding for some developers. However, if we analyze it from the perspective of opportunity cost, with the ability and contribution of these developers, they can earn much more in any other software commercial company. The opportunity cost they pay for Bitcoin development is frighteningly high.

Do developers work for fame? Judging from the results, there are almost no Bitcoin developers with a good reputation. Except for Satoshi Nakamoto, who has received god-like evaluations, and the late Hal Finney, who has also received high evaluations, all other Bitcoin developers have a bad reputation.

Gavin Andreessen, the successor of Satoshi Nakamoto, has been kicked out of the Core development team. Criticisms against Gavin also come from the Chinese community. The most famous insulter is Samson Mow, COO of BTCC (Bitcoin China). Mow's insults to Gavin seem to be an irreconcilable hatred.

The current main players of the Core development team, such as Gmaxwell, Peter todd, and Luke-jr, are regarded as dictators by the community. The foreign community reddit jokingly calls their main battlefield of public opinion reddit/bitcoin North Korea.

In fact, we cannot find a single active Bitcoin developer alive with a very good reputation.

If developers are neither for profit nor fame, can we only believe that they are a group of noble idealists? For an economy that has now exceeded tens of billions of dollars, it is too frivolous to take such an important matter for granted and rely on idealism to achieve it. And there are even more terrible things here.

Chapter 3: There is no accountability for developers’ work

There is no accountability system for developers’ work, and Bitcoin has had software accidents in its history. The three most famous ones are:

1. On August 15, 2010, hackers exploited a code loophole at block height 74638 to generate 184.4 billion bitcoins.

2. On March 12, 2013, Bitcoin qt 0.8 and Bitcoin qt 0.7 were incompatible, causing the Bitcoin blockchain to split into two chains at height 225430.

3. On July 4, 2015, due to an unexpected deployment of BIP 66 soft fork in Bitcoin Core 0.10, the Bitcoin blockchain split at height 363731.

All three incidents were resolved properly, but compared to any regular project, there is never any accountability for incidents that occur on Bitcoin. But when the incident is properly resolved, the people who organized the solution will be highly appreciated by the community.

On the one hand, you can’t gain fame and fortune from your work, and on the other hand, you don’t need to take any responsibility for accidents caused by your work, and finally, solving the accidents brings even greater reputation. These three points add up to make us pessimistic about the future of Bitcoin.

Chapter 4 Bitcoin’s Two-Tier Governance Structure

From the perspective of fame and profit, it can be seen that Bitcoin has a clear two-tier governance structure.

The first layer is a huge infrastructure formed by the profit-seeking behavior of users on a decentralized peer-to-peer network. The most important people in this layer are companies and individuals such as miners, exchanges, and coin holders. In this layer, everyone is selfish and abides by certain rules to promote common interests. The future of this layer is very bright, because selfishness is the root of Satoshi Nakamoto's design of Bitcoin, and it is also the driving force for the development of human society. Bitcoin has grasped its essence. We temporarily call this group the Bitcoin user class.

The second layer is the open source community of developers who design and develop Bitcoin infrastructure. The most important layer is Bitcoin developers. The members of this layer are currently in a strange situation. It is difficult for them to achieve fame and wealth. But they have great power. We call this layer the Bitcoin development and design class.

The current Bitcoin economic system shows a power structure that is highly constructed through technical means. A small number of experts who do not need to be responsible (at most have limited liability) have a huge influence and potential destructive power over Bitcoin. These influences and destructive powers form a technical design class.

The Bitcoin technical design class is different from the general open source software development group. Although Bitcoin itself emphasizes that it is an open and decentralized design, in fact, effective development and design must be handed over to a highly centralized development group to merge the code. Now this highly centralized development group is the Core development group. The current Core development group has shown a highly authoritarian nature and has developed a kind of technical bureaucracy. They crack down on dissidents and unite to fight against dissidents.

Developers have enormous power over the basic design of Bitcoin, but this power can neither be converted into cash nor gain reputation. Based on human nature, there are only two ways out for such power. One is idealists who are willing to sacrifice their lives and blood for some ideal; the other is to cause sabotage and profit through threats.

Chapter 5: The Conflict between Bitcoin’s Technical Design and User Layers

The Litecoin community once revealed a shocking piece of information that shocked me to death. We all know that Litecoin mining is almost monopolized by China, but there are only a few Litecoin developers. Developers can't make any money, but miners have money. But developers have power, and Litecoin has no future without developers. Originally, everyone tended to use the method of profitable miners and companies donating to developers to solve the conflict between the power and benefits of both parties. But both sides don't trust each other.

Litecoin developers negotiated with Chinese miners, and the developers requested that 10% of the coins be automatically sent to the Litecoin Foundation address in the Litecoin mining client. Of course, the negotiation ended in failure.

There are as many conflicts between developers and users in Bitcoin, and the level of distrust between the two sides is no less than that in the Litecoin community.

In the past few years, Bitcoin established an influential foundation. Companies in the community that made money would provide funds to the foundation through donations. The foundation would organize forces to promote Bitcoin to the outside world and improve the Bitcoin code. The end result of the foundation's operation was an organization that was extremely corrupt and was eventually abandoned by the community, leaving behind endless infamy. This period of history is a concentrated manifestation of the conflict between the two-layer governance structure of Bitcoin that I have seen. However, the conflict has become even more intense in the dispute over the block size in the past two years.

The first major outbreak of the conflict between the Bitcoin user layer and the technical design layer over the block size issue was triggered by Gavin Andresen, the successor of Satoshi Nakamoto, and another developer Mike Hearn. After long-term negotiations with the Core development team failed, Gavin released a client version of Bitcoin XT with a block size increase. After the release of XT, the Bitcoin user layer almost unanimously voted against Gavin, and the developer layer also widely criticized XT.

The conflict between Bitcoin users and technical designers over block expansion has lasted for more than two years since the XT incident, and there is still no result. Representative incidents include:

1. Gavin led the release of the XT and Classic versions, which received no support and had their reputation severely damaged. XT developer Mike even declared the Bitcoin project a failure;

2. Several major mining pools in China reached a consensus at a meeting and signed a statement to expand the block size to 8M, forcing the Core development team. However, the Core development team completely ignored it;

3. The Chinese miners' representatives of Hong Kong Consensus and core devs reached a consensus in a meeting. The two parties signed an interest exchange agreement, in which the developers promised to develop codes that met the miners' requirements, and the miners promised to only support Core software. But then the main Core developers, especially Gmaxwel, widely insulted the Hong Kong Consensus;

4. Representatives of Chinese miners and American entrepreneurs negotiated with the Core development team in California, USA, trying to reach a consensus on capacity expansion. The Core developers completely rejected the Hong Kong consensus, and some even threatened to withdraw from development if capacity expansion was not achieved;

5. An anonymous person donated $500,000 to the Unlimited development team, a competitor of the Core development team;

6. The Core development team and its supporters carried out speech control in the community, launched a protracted speech control on reddit/bitcoin, Bitcointalk.com and bitcoin.org, and deleted a large number of opponents' speeches;

7. Representatives of miners, entrepreneurs and the Core development team met in Milan to discuss block expansion. However, the Core development team controlled the meeting process and refused to discuss expansion. The Milan meeting became a political declaration of the Core development team - their goal was to design Bitcoin as an anonymous currency, which was completely contrary to the ideas of entrepreneurs and miners.

8. Miners vote between the isolated witness launched by Core and the expanded client launched by Unlimited.

This series of events shows that the two classes of Bitcoin currently do not trust each other at all, and even the basic negotiation and dialogue mechanism has disappeared. The two classes are also falling apart internally, and there is all sorts of mutual distrust. The situation is quite complicated.

Chapter 6: The difference in ideas between the Bitcoin design class and the user class under the conflict of interests

As mentioned in Chapter 2, it is difficult for the design class of Bitcoin to gain widespread commercial benefits and reputation through its own development and design, as all the money is earned by the user class. Entrepreneurs and mining pools in the user class have the motivation to make up for the interest gap between the two parties through donations, but the results are not ideal, and the two sides have not formed a dialogue mechanism.

When interests could not be reconciled, the two sides developed ideological differences on the future of Bitcoin.

The user class, especially mining pools and major companies, hope that the future of Bitcoin will be a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that maintains a public ledger, expands block limits, and allows more people to participate freely.

The current Core development team advocates anonymizing Bitcoin. They plan to do Mimblewimble, fungibility, and CoinJoin on the Bitcoin main chain, with the goal of completely turning Bitcoin's public blockchain into an anonymous ledger. They don't care about the development and growth of Bitcoin's economic ecosystem, because they can't make money this way anyway. But an anonymous currency system that can resist government censorship is the ideal of this group of people with strong anarchist and anti-government ideas.

The two sides have been going further and further apart on the path of Bitcoin development. During the argument, both sides have lost their basic gentlemanly image, and insults like shrews often occur.

Chapter 7: The uncertain future of Bitcoin’s governance structure

No matter how much we have high ideals for the future of Bitcoin, we have to admit that Bitcoin is currently in an experimental stage. The community members involved have not formed a mature cooperative relationship, and the technology is not mature. It is difficult for us to find a strategy to ensure that the Bitcoin project meets the greatest common divisor of the interests of all stakeholders.

At the current stage, the greatest common divisor of the interests of the user class can be found. The logic that has maintained Bitcoin's operation for 8 years is this greatest common divisor, that is, expanding the block capacity. To achieve this goal, we must find a way to eliminate the current technical development bureaucracy that is opposed to the user class, especially the Core development team.

Where can the interests of Bitcoin's technical development class, especially the technical bureaucratic class of the Core development team, be maximized? I think it is on the Bitcoin sidechain.

Chapter 8 Conclusion

Bitcoin currently lacks meritocratic leadership with a world-class vision.