Over the weekend I stirred shit up on twitter (like usual) and riled up some of the bitcoin core development community with this tweet:
I regret posting the tweet, not because I don’t stand by the post but because all that ends up happening in such cases is a bunch of people I respect misinterpret the tweet, jump to conclusions and are left insulted when they haven’t even been presented a with a proper position.
As a Bitcoin CEO myself I too feel sorry for anyone who is losing their living in this bear market, I have had to make several very difficult decisions with cutbacks within my own company. Trust me I feel you, bitcoin develobrahs.
I didn’t engage a whole lot on that thread and the subsequent quote-tweet dunks because, frankly speaking, twitter is a shit forum for nuanced discussion and who has the time to chase around dozens of meandering twitter threads? It is simply a terrible platform for debate and is best used for dunking and getting ratios, which is exactly what the people who disagreed with me did well enough (lol)!
So to clear the mempool of misconception I wrote this email in response to an email from one of the people who I appear to have insulted, he claims he develops for the bitcoin reference client:
Email from bitcoin developer:
Hey man, I gotta address this thoughtless remark of yours on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/SGBarbour/status/1619307498070241280
I responded to it, but you chose to ignore me, and so I’m gonna make sure I’m not ignored.
I go out of my way to build on technologies that drive up demand for Bitcoin as its fee token. Now that we have Lightning, that doesn’t diminish Bitcoin’s utility, but it does complicate the future of how Bitcoin sustains itself through fees alone. You should be grateful for all those building wallets and layers and indexes and explorers and applications to make Bitcoin more accessible and useful.
For you to delegitimize the concept of a Bitcoin developer, that we shouldn’t be paid for our work, is incredibly insulting. Just because we’re not lugging physical things around in reality doesn’t mean this isn’t incredibly challenging work that doesn’t require the entirety of one’s focus. It’s very difficult to split one’s attention when working on Bitcoin, it’s the most challenging work I’ve ever done in my career, and I’ve worked in Web3, and I also have over ten years of professional experience as a developer, if that gives you any sense of perspective. It certainly doesn’t pay the best compared to other places that could benefit from my time, but this is a calling.
It’s messed up that someone in your position would just say “Bitcoin development is not a job”; it sure as hell is, it’s literally my job title, and I get paid to do it, because the market says my work provides value.
You should publicly walk back your remarks. Clarify what you meant, in the very least. Or maybe just go home, quit Twitter, quit your job, if you think people shouldn’t have steady jobs working on Bitcoin.
My response:
I appreciate your concern.
First off, the tweet is factual. Bitcoin does not employ people, in that sense it is not a job, quite literally. If you are employed to work on bitcoin core, you are employed by a third party and you are a Company X developer who contributes to bitcoin. My concern on the matter has nothing to do with whether or not people should work on bitcoin or that their work should be appreciated. My concern is related to the disincentive that being employed to develop bitcoin creates. As a developer who is employed you have a bias not to generate content that is against the business interest of your employer. This is called a conflict of interest. Your interest is to your employer, or donator, regardless of how you internalize that. A bitcoin developer’s interest is best aligned to the economy who uses it. Naturally, the developers who have the best alignment with bitcoiners are the developers who A) remain anonymous (due to threat of government / violence) and B) do it for passion / interest, not for money. Bitcoin is designed to defund the government’s central bank… this is a very dangerous game.
My concern also relates to the very real fact that the enemies of bitcoin are presently employing people to implement divisive code and changes to the reference client. The only way they can harm bitcoin is by seeding division or by eliminating privacy. The latter is hard to do, but seeding divisive content is much easier and has already been successful. The truth is that very few economic nodes exist and they are generally block explorers, exchanges and mining pools. The vast majority of users just follow their lead without question. Subsidized social attack vectors are a very real threat. The enemies of bitcoin want bitcoiners to infight and fork and subdivide their economies (e.g. Bcash vs BTC vs BSV vs etc etc.), they don’t want us whole because we are weaker divided. The only point of my comments, past and present, is to bring awareness that bitcoin core development is in itself a potential attack vector on the bitcoin economy. Do you disagree this this statement?
Political attack vectors to divide the network are very real, are effective and are actively being subsidized. Development choices that divide the economy, even if its a small subset, should be taken very seriously. We are building a foundation for a thousand years here are we not?
For example, the recent RBF concerns by John Carvalho is a small example of a dissenter’s business interests being “forked off” the network. This is not a comment on the legitimacy of John’s issue, I don’t know enough about it, but splitting people’s use cases off the network is unnerving. He clearly disagreed and it hurt his business, if he is to be trusted. This is not good!
For example, the refusal of developers to implement a patented Schnorr signatures before the patent lapsed is evidence that A) developers are fearful of lawsuit or B) developers are fearful of end user lawsuit. Bitcoin is literally designed not to care about authorities yet we see development by the reference client censored by fear of Government threat? Really makes you think… Why wasn’t it pushed to the reference client during the patent validity and let the end user decide what version of core to run? Why should reference client developers choose for businesses when and what to run??
For example, one could argue the entire block size drama settled in 2017 was a massive failure of bitcoin core to resist politics because the developers compromised, albeit with a small concession, to the big blockers by implementing effective larger block space when SegWit was merged. This was a speculative, political decision and had no basis of need at the time. Years later blocks are still mostly not full and fees are still tiny. The market still does not exist for that decision to have been made.
Note I am referring to what Francis is talking about here:
I too am also disappointed, by the lack of critical thought from yourself and those who have rushed to conclusions on this particular thread and my prior tweets on this subject. Have I ever been someone not to at least have a nuanced view on anything in this space? It is very clear that there is a growing social clique amongst bitcoin core developers which is gaining influence. Look how fast they convinced mining pools to signal and push through Taproot. They actively campaigned for it! This is politics and politics is the enemy of bitcoin. There are a lot of paid developers who, in my non-expert opinion, seem to be pushing for solving problems that don’t currently exist. Perhaps that’s because of their interest in their employer? Maybe they just want to live long enough to see their hard work merged?? Bitcoin development is slow after all. I don’t know, but it is worth worrying about and paranoia is the default state.
It should be everyone’s priority to change the code as little as possible if we hope that it will become the foundation for all of human civilization, as good money is. In this light bitcoin core developers are literally working to put themselves out of a “job”, yet this is not a good prospect for one employed to change the code now is it? I have tweeted about this topic for years, as I said to others in the thread, twitter is not a forum for nuanced arguments. If you came blind to that thread and never read anything I ever wrote before I don’t blame you for jumping to conclusions. This is why I offered to discuss on a proper forum, for example, a podcast.
Since you took the time to write me and I very clearly insulted you, hopefully my response at least gives you my proper perspective. I am always more than happy to revise my opinion and have no issues publicly admitting wrongdoing.
I do appreciate your work and development in general as long as you are also wary of the very real threat I am describing.
Steve
I am very happy to revise my opinions and synchronize with the truth, feel free to message me if you have something to add!
