Bitcoin Forum

Blockchain based technologies are suddenly a trend and every Tom, Dick and Harry wants it's company to develop their own Blockchain based technology. We also saw huge corporations like Facebook getting in on the action with Libra and this will spark copy cats from trying the same.

The question is, will our skilled Bitcoin developers abandon Bitcoin when these large companies approach them to work on their projects or would they stand firm against these money bags?

What will Bitcoin be without these people working hard behind the scenes to constantly improve and secure the technology for us all?  :(

Aren't a lot of them volunteers? I don't think they're in it for the money. Either way, it's still an open source project, meaning we shouldn't get a shortage of talent for as long as there are people who care for the well being of Bitcoin.

Yes it is Opensource, but you get very talented developers and then you get crappy developers and the people participating now are excellent. A lot of these people are doing this for the bigger cause and not the money, but we saw people like Mike Hearn leaving for the money and this can happen to the people we have now, if the offer is high enough. <Well, Mike Hearn might be a bad example, because he tried to sabotage Bitcoin and he rage quit when he did not succeed.>

We need people who are passionate about the cause and not people who would sabotage the project.  :P

Examples like Mike will always be there in any industry whether  it is related to finance or not. The sabotage attempt was a different story though!

But if a talented developer wants to leave his responsibility towards  bitcoin code development for a fat package, we can't blame them either because money is needed in every segment of life! I would not wonder if more developers receive fat package offers from IT conglomerates. Retaining talents was always a challenge for open source projects where majority of the talents are working voluntarily.

But the way Bitcoin has retained its position as a top order open source project, it should never face any challenges to retain top talents! Reputation matters a lot of this market! Not everyone will want to loose that reputation of being involved in bitcoin core development team! So we will see a steady flow of developers to take on any vacant position that may occur!

"Bitcoin developers" is in fact a blanket term, Bitcoin is an open source project with hundreds of contributors. It's very possible that many of those contributors can be working or will work in the future in some blockchain-related projects. Blockstream is the biggest example that comes to mind. There's nothing wrong with that, people can still do both easily. If you mean that the most active developers will abandon Bitcoin for a blockchain job, I don't think it's likely to happen now, they seem to be very passionate about Bitcoin.

Developers are people too, and they have their side projects they work on. It's perfectly fine considering that it doesn't lead to any problems at all, and it may be a great thing too because it makes you focus on other things.

I haven't seen many developers constantly working on one single thing. Just imagine yourself doing the same thing over at your job all the time, it would piss you off and you will go to your job unhappy.

Exactly that. Some developers don't gain a single penny for their contributions-- the passion and the goal alone is already enough to keep developers dedicated to Bitcoin. Where else do you find that in crypto?

I'm not too worried. If the success of Bitcoin hinged on just a handful of people, then it's not nearly as decentralized as advertised. I'm very grateful to our developers and I acknowledge their hard work and talent, but they're meant to be replaceable. Heck, even Satoshi ghosted everyone and Bitcoin still thrived.

This model has worked about as well as it could for as long as it has existed, and I have no reason to believe Bitcoin would be any different.

lets not confuse money grabbers and ICO scammers with everyone and actual trends that are going on in the real world. last time i checked the "real world" nobody was using the blockchain technology and majority of the experienced developers were considering it useless in anything but a decentralized currency like bitcoin.
here is a good case: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#blockchain-in-the-real-world

the real question is "should it matter?".
if we believe bitcoin to be decentralized, it should never depend on a handful of developers. and it is not. there are many good developers familiar with Bitcoin protocol and have been contributing to advancement of it. if something happens to current developers (natural disasters, moving on to other things,...) they will simply be replaced.

Blockchain has been a lucrative field of study at current time. And many enthusiastics, programmers, engineers and freelancers has shifted their interest towards blockchain. Computer engineering collages has started including blockchain as a field of study. So, I don't think we'll ever have a shortage of developers.

Just take a look at other projects. Did Linus Torvalds abandoned Linux when getting hired? No, if anything they could insist in their contract their work in other projects remain separate and not subject to company ownership, etc.

Many free open source developers get hired by companies but they keep doing their work in the projects they lead outside their employer.

With time they could, every man has a price and with this big companies launching new coins, it'll only be a matter of time before they switch base to help develop an underlying technology for this new companies, since they will have more money to pay.

But it's nothing to be worried about, definitely all devs cannot be attracted out, and bitcoin is too strong a coin to depend on some developers, the more they go, the more we get more devs, that's just the thing, there will never be a time that bitcoin will lack a qualified number of developers.

Well many of them have jumped board. The current leaders of crypto project form different enterprises are once the prominent member of other projects. It's better for them to work a paid job than to volunteer in hope of anything that they hold may be of large value someday as even if they don't volunteer, someone would still work and the price would still rise.
Yes, they have been moving and decentralized and open source projects are lacking volunteer developers.

I do not believe the industry would suffer much from the loss of it's too developers. Firstly when you consider that this is a network that is billed to revolutionize the financial industry and by all means outlive us including the current developers then it can surely function without them.

Just need a consistent supply of skilled and devoted devs, and there is no shortage of that around the world.

the first half of your statement, I have no doubt, but the part in bold there, I don't think the blockchain is a subject broad enough to be considered for a major, its too niche to make a 4 year program out of. a few classes here and there, I could definitely understand, perhaps that's what you meant?

the example you gave in this case might hold true, but the corporate world isn't always so kind; some of the bigger companies (facebook being a relevant example) might include clauses in their contracts stating those devs cannot touch any other blockchain / crypto related products while they work for the company. and depending on the paycheck, the dev might choose to forgo their other projects.

I like the replies so far, because it is mostly positive and people seem to think that most current developers in Bitcoin as a OpenSource experiment are passionate about the technology and that they would still participate, even if they get employed by some Moneybag corporation.

It is quite different if these corporations contractually force them not to work on other projects, while they are employed at these companies or if they are so busy with their new projects that they cannot give enough attention to Bitcoin as their side project.

It boils down to quality time and undivided attention to Bitcoin and inferior contributions from less skilled developers, when the more experienced developers gets occupied with other jobs.  ::)

A lot of them are doing it during their spare time and as a hobby, without being paid. Not all are working for a blockchain company and they will surely continue if they're hired.
Bitcoin is something and the blockchain is something else. It's like asking will you continue to play football with the high demand for Mac Donald

I do agree, even bitcoin was first designed to be decentralized meaning it has no need to be controlled by group of people. Losing developers? not a problem but losing hash power while difficulty increases might be a pain in the ass though the difficulty will just adjusting with the hash.
Also the last segwit and lightning network is decided by consensus if im not mistaken? that means it is really controlled by the community.

You can't really blame them even though i believe principles matter too.
 Hopefully they won't abandon the community completely or hopefully they get lucky, get  part-time jobs and still get paid well.
In the end we could be left with idealistic ones?

Most bitcoin devs do have their own careers apart from developing bitcoin,, and most are also volunteers, with the exception of some core devs doing full-time coding work for bitcoin. They can jump ship to other projects and still maintain close connection with bitcoin developments without any complications, so I don't think it will be a big problem in the long run should some devs decide to go on and do other projects for the $$$.

bitcoin have a lot of developer or contributor and i think its really impossible for all of them to leave the development and as of now even without further development bitcoin function will still continue but anyone can contribute in bitcoin development as long as it will fix some problem because its open source.

Yea, sure.... but I have had some very bad experiences before when I hired a building contractor and these guys worked on 5 or 6 different projects at a time. When you have to split your time into several different projects, you might neglect the projects that does not pay you for your time.

Some employers also hire people with specific clauses in their contract that stipulate that they are not allowed to work on other projects that might be direct competition to the work that you do for them.  ::)  <Conflict of interest>

Most of the bitcoin developers were early adopter of the tech and bitcoin. So they should probably be rich or should be more or less addicted to the technology behind it. This doesn't force the devs to move to a moneybag corporation aiming to destroy the bitcoin with less experienced developers. I was reading through a post of achow in the tech discussion highlighting the current situation of the bitcoin development. The current state of developers are people having  10 years of hands on experience in bitcoin. So any developer who helps the community for around 5-7 years would surely get on track with the development and would contribute more positively.

The major drawback with the development is that, there are lesser people who have a strong knowledge on technical aspects of the cryptocurrency and bitcoin technology. Still there are a handful of countries which doesn't even know about bitcoin but might have good developers with them. Once the technology reaches limelight and people start looking into the code (neglecting the get rich quick scheme idea), bitcoin doesn't want to just rely on only a handful of developers.

See this : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5164699.msg51804992#msg51804992

There is nothing wrong if they jump ship. If they feel that going into centralized blockchain is more beneficial to them then we cannot force them to stay. There is no lacking in developers anyway. I think those who are dedicated to bitcoin blockchain will stay and those who leave can be replaced with new developers.

Most of them are getting paid to do that work, so not really 'working for us'.

Most of these guys are there from the start, my advice for them is when you on the verge of giving up just remember why you start. the problem is we have something we want to do all the time so if Bitcoin is your passion even a thousand mimickers will appear you never gonna leave bitcoin even for a second.

as I say we have something we want but not all the time we can have what we want, so if some opportunity will come like hiring you to develop a company that supports to dethrone bitcoin. You will need to choose between your dream or to support someone we love. we all know that not all the time we have funds to spend, sometimes we need to earn something to support our financial need.

If some opportunity like that will come we cannot blame those guys if they want to switch to other companies because they caught between the 2 lines, and sometimes financial needs are most important.

There are too many developers out there and it will replace if there's someone left behind. The fact is we can't blame developers who accept another project from another blockchain company to develop I'm sure they do that just for money. And the developers of bitcoin are volunteer only they don't bring benefits because it is open source technology which technically they are working for free. Unless, if they also have part of a whale.

So, there's nothing to worry if some of them are jumping into another ship just for seeking more incentives in dollars which is we also need it. Remember that bitcoin core is open-source code and we had a bunch of developers out there who passionate to develop blockchain technology.

Well, that's really more of a question that needs to be directed to each developer personally, then them as a whole. I am sure some developers will definitely be enticed by the big bucks companies like Facebook are able to offer, while some will definitely not do that.

I do reckon with all of this happening, we will see a lot more people getting into bitcoin development. Possible uni/school courses that are specific for Bitcoin and Blockchain based technology.