Author: Antoine Riard 2021-06-21 15:05:57
Published on: 2021-06-21T15:05:57+00:00
The recent survey on potential softforks for the near-future of Bitcoin has sparked grassroots involvement in bitcoin protocol development. Softforks represent the aggregation of thousands of hours of sweat from contributors all across the ecosystem with discussion extending from IRC public or private chans, mailing list, medias, etc.However, one should not ignore the submerged part of bitcoin protocol development iceberg as there are far more areas of Bitcoin dev that would benefit from a gentle boost by happy hands. For instance, if you take Bitcoin Core, you have few ongoing projects were folks have a hard time moving forward, and they might require more than pure "coding" skills, such as specification, simulations, extensive code coverage, up-to-date meeting documents. All those projects are modifying critical areas of Bitcoin such as the validation engine or the p2p stack and AFAICT, they deserve more care.The human layer of Bitcoin dev might be the one where grassroots-involvement might be the most fruitful. The Bitcoin dev stage has changed a bit since the last 18 months, especially w.r.t to few factors, the arrival of massive development funding, the sudden mediatisation of protocol developers and the pursued geographical spreading, diversification and education of the poolset of contributors. However, things have been so fast that sometimes one can wonder if there isn't a bubble around Bitcoin dev? Few OGs might suggest we're back to 2017, with ICO-like webpage pinning "developers-as-brands". In reality, we see new grant announcements every month or week, but still, the number of reviewers on Core doesn't seem to increase? Time will separate the wheat from the chaff though how to make things better in the short term is uncertain. The ongoing mediatization increase of the Bitcoin dev stage in the last months or so didn't improve the current state of affairs. We now see technical proposals, of which the soundness has not been thoroughly discussed in the traditional venues, being announced in big pump as some kind of "done-deal", potentially sustaining the false belief it has been already blessed or approved by the rest of the development community.Another bottleneck in Bitcoin development is the ongoing spreading of contributors around many geographical areas and timezones, making intra-communication far harder. The author suggests ways to address conflicts of interest and encourages grassroots engagement and industry support in addressing these issues. One issue is the challenge of communication among developers across different time zones and levels of energy. Maintaining fault-tolerant communication without sacrificing quality is another challenge. The author also highlights the importance of diversity in Bitcoin development and congratulates female Bitcoin hackers for their contributions. Additionally, the need for developer education, including security-oriented individuals, is emphasized. The author mentions concerns about direct pressure on developers, citing the ongoing CSW case. Finally, several links are provided throughout the text for further reading on related topics.
Updated on: 2023-05-21T02:44:51.453701+00:00