Bitcoin maintainer Wladimir: Striving forward in confusion and bewilderment

I’m very happy to be doing my job, working with some of the smartest people in the world on this extremely interesting project, with all sorts of new challenges that will have very profound consequences. But on the other hand, working on Bitcoin has to be the most hostile, insane work environment in the world, at least in software development.

This blog post is my thoughts on some recent events and should not be regarded as an official statement from Bitcoin or Bicoin Core.

The fierce battle between the gods

The poisoned atmosphere

We have been targeted by trolls on social networks, day after day, one after another, and I really can't find another project like this. I have seen development teams working on large online games face pressure like us, but this is even more severe. The change in the direction of the rules of the game is very controversial, and our work affects the entire economic system, and some of those who attack us are not even users of this software.

What's worse is that the cannon fodder instigator claims to be part of the project, not just involved, but the project leader, and is openly hostile to us along with his developers and users.

Some development tasks are very complex and require long periods of concentrated effort to solve. It is necessary to reduce external interference and at least make sure that your team is behind you.

So, over the past year we have been creating a clean and focused environment for developers to work in. Part of this work has been to reform the project itself, separating "Bitcoin Core" from Bitcoin. Bitcoin is understood as a public asset. No one owns the entire Bitcoin system, it is considered decentralized and immaterial.

Bitcoin Core is a piece of software, maintained by a team, based on open source principles. People choose who they want to work with and who they don't want to work with.

It’s time to part ways with some of the people who were involved early on and who have become ossified or even toxic over time, especially if they haven’t been involved in the project for a long time.

It's a scam all the way down.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is in a very bad way. It has always been favored by scammers (remember mybitcoin ?), scammers (remember pirateat40 ?), and all kinds of speculators.

The invention of Bitcoin is a legend, and it is followed by some people like a belief.

There is something ridiculous going on right now. Someone claims to be the creator of Bitcoin, using technical and social tricks to prove it with a mistimed GPG key and a forged digital signature. This may be a classic case of a cat replacing a prince. Despite all the flaws, many people still believe that this person is the creator of Bitcoin. The bigger confusion is, where does the truth start and where does the confusion and scam end? I am very worried about this.

I was not sure, and I am not sure, how Gavin was involved. It does not look like he was hacked, but at least he was confused. When we saw his blog post stating that he was sure that Satoshi Nakamoto was found, the wisest thing to do was to revoke his privileges in the Bitcoin organization directly in the github repository where Bitcoin is located.

Previously, Gavin stated that "Satoshi Nakamoto can write access to Bitcoin's repository on GitHub at any time as long as he requests it." So, if he is sure that this person is Satoshi Nakamoto, then he is giving the repository to a scammer.

Minimum permissions

This was the final straw, and his privilege became a hindrance to the project team (not least because Mike Hearn asked to shut down the project through him).

The computer security principle of least privilege is that users have access only to the resources they need to complete their tasks.

This is not optional for us. Remember how the Bitcoin sourceforge account was hacked using Satoshi Nakamoto's idle account?

Gavin was not doing anything as a maintainer at the time, and had been unmotivated for a long time before that.

People are moving on to more interesting things, and no one is obligated to make this project their life's work, which is understandable. But the world also goes on, and if you work on other things, you can't expect the world to go back to the way you left it. Either way, it's time to withdraw these privileges.

I have asked privately, spoken on the phone, and emailed Gavin to give up his GitHub privileges multiple times, and of course others, and his answer is always "I'll think about it." Being on the opposite side does not happen out of thin air.

Once the arrow is shot, there is no turning back

Should we let Gavin back as a maintainer? This is a question that I and others answered with a resounding "no". Firstly, because he didn't act like a maintainer in the first place, and secondly, we would be more productive without him!