Bitcoin Forum

Great news from Coinbase that will sposnsor two Bitcoin core developers with first Crypto Community Fund grants.
Bitcoin started as open source without any initial funds and it is amazing that it survived and thrived for so many years, but new developers and projects are always good to have.

Example projects they will be supporting:
Source: https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-will-sponsor-two-bitcoin-core-developers-with-first-crypto-community-fund-grants-cf55a3a520a3

If you are Bitcoin Core developer you can apply or suggest someone HERE (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1RyrQLJpuG-Y2Us3On_CuKPlVQaLU81GqSL2kyHXTb90/viewform)

Good move from Coinbase and I expect other crypto related companies to follow their example, and we want to see more interesting development around Bitcoin.

I wonder what string they have attached with it. They are all about in business so obviously they have plans to pull out something out of it. It's just hard to believe Coinbase doing anything for nothing.

Not sure if I will call it good.

Yeah I agree with that... If they don't want something now, they'll want it sooner than we will want them to be able to...

US companies look good for extortion and predatory business practices, that could be brought across into cryptocurrency and cause a lot of chain splits.

You think Bitcoin developers live on air and that Bitcoin will never need new developers?  ;D
It's not like those two guys can make backdoor access just for Coinbase that none of other devs will notice...
Btw Adam Back liked this news and asking about it:
https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/1316808871801954306

Now that is a bit exaggeration don't you think so, putting all US companies in same basket and blaming them for chain splits?

I did not say any of these of course. Coinbase is going to do anything without any catch is not comfortable news. I agree with jackg, sooner or later we will face the consequence. It's just not clear now that how it will be done.

I am not comfortable to back anything that Adam Back has to say too.

Coinbase already had a bad history. So yeah, I will not consider ALL that was applied here.

With him being one of the major backers behind behind HalognMining (the DragonMint miners) and the ASICBoost "Defensive Patent Protection" scheme I hope to God he is NOT one of the devs that gets sponsored. He sure as hell does not need the money and has a general disdain for anything that is good or ethical for the BTC Community!

It's Coinbase that is following Square (https://twitter.com/sqcrypto/status/1267493740417089536)  and Bitmex (https://blog.bitmex.com/hdr-okcoin-join-forces-to-provide-a-us150000-grant-to-bitcoin-c%C6%92ore-developer-amiti-uttarwar/), but yeah, about time they start spending some money.



First, there is publicity, then bitcoin is their main business, at one point you have to spend money to help it develop or you're going to lose more longterm, besides I doubt the sums will be that big, probably just some pocket money Coinbase has decided to put to some better use. Let them spend it, I just wish they would have spent some on implementing batching trasnactions 3 years earlier...

Fair points:

It seems they have already managed to get it. Good for them but not much good for people who value their privacy. Some day without their knowledge Coinbase will hand over the information to third party and no law enforcement will say a word.

Information is the business.

This never crossed my mind. Thing is when you heard a big company is going to sponsor or giving fund - we tend to have the expectation that it will be some life changing big amount.

Maybe I am too pessimistic in this news but hopefully this brings some good to the bitcoin community without damaging much. This is all that matters.

Why some people are surprised? It's quite common for big open-source project where big companies sponsor/recruit someone to develop on open-source project. Even majority of contribution on linux kernel are done by programmer working on/sponsored by company.


But they don't have much publicity on bitcoin/open-source development. Sponsoring 2 developers have small costs for company as big as Coinbase.

Coinbase should sponsor achow101 IMO, he's a very active bitcoin developer  :)

They did say in their blog we'd be able to nominate people for the sponsorship, but I don't see an option to nominate people anywhere in the Google Form. I think Coinbase needs to be contacted about it as currently there's no "official" (as in, don't expect a recommendation by tweet to be considered) channel to nominate people anywhere, the Google Form's only for the applicants themselves.

that doesn't mean it is a good thing just because some other project is infested by it.
the centralized companies have proven that they aren't doing anything for the greater good! not to mention that the centralization that would come in could have many negative sides. worst case scenario is government putting pressure on the centralized company and the company putting pressure on their "employee" to do something malicious to bitcoin.

This will be the same Coinbase who were quite keen to fire all the core developers are bring in a whole new team just a few years ago, right? The same Coinbase who tried to swing their weight around to force 2MB blocks and prevent SegWit from happening, against all the recommendations and plans from core developers?


What's changed? Why are they suddenly sponsoring people they wanted rid of a few years ago? Leverage?

Exactly. Coinbase already work hand in hand with governments and banks. These are not the kind of people we want funding bitcoin development.

It's open source though, so how exactly could there be malicious coding or strings attached to this offering? Coinbase may have more influence over them, but in case anything goes wrong isn't there just enough possibility for reversal? I don't think it'd take too long before someone notices something's wrong in the new lines of code..

Here is a common scenario of real life in a job place:
Your employer pays your bills and you obey whatever they say or you are risking your paycheck, right? Yes, maybe an employer who value their employees would give them freedom of work.

How about an asshole employer? He will wish push you hard to do whatever he wants, if you don't then he will fire you anytime. Coinbase are in no way trustable for bitcoin community, whoever they will sponsor - they (Coinbase) will be that asshole employer of those core developers.

Why would we welcome bugs?

Hey bud, I am out of merit. Thanks for those findings. This news in no way good news for the community. I can feel it in my bones.

I think it'd be a very silly and useless move from Coinbase if that's their plan. Maybe they can force their two sponsored devs to work the way Coinbase wants, but in the end it's going to be an absolute waste of time and resources if the larger community rejects their malicious intents. Or maybe I'm missing something here.

You are missing the unpleasant, untrustworthy and low moral past of Coinbase. I do not think they really care about anything else except the balance sheet of their account. Bitcoin is just a business for them, if this does not work for them then they will move to something else. But for us bitcoin is everything.

Well, that's specifically why I am not worrying much about the sponsorship.

It may actually be a good thing. How many active core devs trust Coinbase and centralized services? Theoretically, there shouldn't be many.. right? As they have to apply themselves for it on Coinbase's website, it's only going to basically be the possible "traitors" of Bitcoin that are going to do it. And as we all can see new changes, it's going to be a complete waste of time & money in the end with a positive ending for us: if any strings are attached, the reputation of those devs who'll take the sponsorship will fall to the ground. Better now than later.

That's exactly what I'm trying to say: there's nothing to really worry about because it won't work, as chances are low the codes will go through unseen and unverified. Just my 2 cents :D

I meant their entire bitcoin business not this news of sponsoring devs. If the business does not work they will move to another business.

A company who merely sponsors an open-source developer or project is just funneling them money without dictating to them what features to make. The situation would be different if company employees were the ones contributing, those have to take orders from their company no matter what because of their legal status as employed by the company, whereas there's no legal relationship between open-source contributors and the company sponsoring them. The only possible leverage Coinbase can put here is to select developers who commit changes to bitcoin that align with their own interests.

The vast majority of bitcoin contributors don't commit like that so I think that anyone who does only work on minor parts of bitcoin, not important enough for Coinbase to seriously consider sponsoring them. If this is Coinbase's intention then spending it on people with little influence isn't going to work for them.

"Develop this way or we will pull your funding."

I don't trust Coinbase with a single satoshi. History has shown that anything they stick their grubby little fingers in to is for their own benefit, and their own benefit alone. They are quite happy to sell out their customers and sell out the community to enrich themselves.

I'm not suggesting that Coinbase are going to try to pay off devs to insert malicious code, or that any of the devs would take up such an offer. What I am suggesting is that the only reason Coinbase are doing this is because they want to be able to influence bitcoin's future development and direction. They wanted a few years ago to get rid of the core devs and set up a new team. It was obvious they were never going to be able to do that, so now they are going to try to influence the direction of bitcoin from the inside. Coinbase are essentially going down the path of "If you can't beat them, join them."

Common, let's not go overboard, are you going to commit suicide tomorrow if bitcoin disappears? How have you lived before?
Bitcoin is just another tool we use in our life, it's not something that we can't live without, look at the 7 billion people carry on living without even owning a satoshi or even knowing what bitcoin is.

As for Coinbase, it's a company, it's their money, it's their choice to do what they want with it. You don't agree with their move, of you're free to not agree but remember the same principle of bitcoin, your keys, your money your decision, just as they can't force you to use bitcoin cash or their service you can't force them to spend their money on what you want.

And in the end, if people involved in bitcoin development fail to coinbase's bribe, aren't they just as guilty?

The announcement is too short and too vague for such an important^* event!
Like: how much money they will pour into this fund?
         how much the grants will be worth?
         where will that money come from? I won't be surprised if they will ask for donations since they called it "crypto community fund"  ;D

^* not because it came from coinbase but because bitcoin core devs are concerned.

Ops! I did not have all those thoughts in mind when I said it. I meant bitcoin is a hope for us to be free from the centralized currency system. A group of people are controlling the entire economy of the world. They can produce as much as they can, their main raw materials that needs to make is papers.

If you print then it's legal but if I print then it's illegal. Weird! Isn't it?

malicious code is not as obvious as you may think. it is not like you would see a line on the code saying
for example if you look at the P2P protocol you can see there were many weaknesses in it, some of which could help another malicious node connected to you to find out a lot about your node (like figuring out addresses that belonged to you). not saying they were maliciously put there but the point is that it is not that hard to introduce this kind of "backdoors" in the protocol without them being noticed easily. the more complicated the protocol gets the harder it would be to detect them too.
2017 also proved that many people in bitcoin world do have malicious intents.

My presumption is that Coinbase will essentially make it someone's job to work on the bitcoin protocol. This is instead of the person working on a bitcoin related project in their free time. I would expect the amount would be in line with that of a software engineer working at a midsize company, low to mid six figures in USD.

In bitcoin's early days, the developers would typically be early adopters who were working to make bitcoin better that would lead to their coin being more useful/valueable. Over time, early adopter devs will find other interests, and there wont be other devs who have the same incentives to work on the bitcoin protocol and/or client.

Coinbase, like other bitcoin companies/exchanges, rely on bitcon's development. It is ultimately up to the usebase to accept any chances/upgrades to the bitcoin protocol, so if coinbase attaches strings involving adding insanity to the bitcoin protocol and/or client, they will be rejected, and the money CB spends will go to waste.

There's a process in Bitcoin development that would mitigate co-opting the Core developers and Bitcoin development. People who want to submit a BIP starts with publishing the proposal in the Bitcoin development mailing list.

Plus the Core developers have been criticized to be very conservative that I believe there is no actual worry about extreme changes in the network.

I surely wasn't expecting obvious malicious lines, but I suppose these are peer-reviewed before being pushed to the public. If someone has the intention to insert something malicious into Bitcoin's codelines, they're probably going to do it at one point whether Coinbase bribes them or not - or maybe they've already done it.

As @stompix says, they'd be just as guilty as Coinbase for taking the sponsorship. While the company might possibly want to change BTC their way, they basically just offered traitors a bait .. and someone would've done this instead of them at one point anyway (maybe Binance, as it seems like they're trying to become the Google of crypto?). If I was a BTC dev, I wouldn't take money from Coinbase unless I knew I'd agree to some stuff others wouldn't.

Why would Coinbase sponsor CORE DEVELOPERS to put malicious code to the network that enriches them? That would be very stupid and laughable.

The idea is not to put malicious code in the network. I doubt Coinbase would try something so silly.

But Coinbase, or any other company who makes money with bitcoin, could manipulate their employers ("core developers") to create codes which would benefit coinbase.

Or give coinbase an advantage over other companies. Or make exchanges more profitable than they are now.

It is hard to tell now what they are planning and how would they achieve any gain, but they certainly could try.


This is an example of something they already tried to do, and they could do something similar in the future again.

Coinbase is a company. They are not compromised with bitcoin decentralization, free web, privacy, etc. They just want to take the most money (USD) as possible out of it.

Exactly. The duplicate input vulnerability accidentally introduced in version 0.14.0 existed for well over a year before it was picked up and patched in version 0.16.2. There are hundreds of different ways that a seemingly innocuous piece of code can break things or introduce new bugs or vulnerabilities, which may not be immediately obvious and could get merged with the main branch.

Although, as I said above, I think it is incredibly unlikely Coinbase are going to try to implement a bug or vulnerability they can take advantage of - when such an issue is discovered, they would lose a significant proportion of their income. Far more likely is that they will try to influence the general direction of bitcoin, just as they have previously with their support of every stupid idea such as Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic, and SegWit2X.

My reasoning has always worked on the fundamental assumption that decentralised governance negates the potential for lobbying and corruption.  Based on what we've seen so far, I'm not overly concerned.  The consensus mechanism is clearly robust in terms of preventing undue influence.  Plus, it's obviously not the first time we've seen sponsored devs.  MIT, Chaincode, Blockstream, etc (https://blog.bitmex.com/who-funds-bitcoin-development/) are already doing it.  No one has really made that big of a fuss about it until this point. 

But I suppose it's only sensible to ask if there's a small potential for sponsorship to be the first step towards introducing lobbying to Bitcoin?  Say, hypothetically, if all the various sponsors got together behind closed doors and tried to do a deal to steer development in a particular direction, is there any danger of that being successful?  And if so, would more sponsorship increase the potential for abuse?

I don't have to trust any developers even if they are sponsored from Coinbase, Blockstream or any other company.
Or maybe Blockstream is good and Coinbase is bad? :)
If developers don't have the spine and blindly follow directives from companies than they will not survive for long, and they will quit as soon as money stops coming from sponsors. Simple.

Again, Coinbase will not sponsor semi-active people who are just looking to make quick money, the people they are looking for must be already be full-time working with a large project. That means, if Coinbase suddenly revoke their sponsorship, these developers aren't going to quit working just because no one's paying them.

I don't understand how people still think that Coinbase can tell independent open-source developers at the other site of the world what to do, like what medium are they going to send the orders with? Zoom, email, phone call? Who at the company will be giving orders? Like I said earlier, nobody there is recognized as the developers' legal employer. They also can't make them sign NDAs to stop them from calling out Coinbase. Are we suddenly going to distrust the selected developers and hold them with suspicion just because they received the sponsorship?

OTOH, sponsorships will actually encourage more people to contribute, as now they can make a living. You need to understand, that many open source developers are not employed and are contributing for free. Too many open source projects dried up because their maintainers needed to get a job to sustain themselves and then ran out of free time to continue maintaining.

Let's just say, Coinbase has some rouges in there, but we also cannot say the company only makes negative things. I just felt the urge to explain this.

 
Core developers have the final say of what goes into bitcoin, and the majority of them will likely not take any sponsorship.

It's not the developers we should be suspicious of, but the source of the money.  Let's not turn it into a witch-hunt.  But say there's a noticeable change in a particular dev's priorities after they start getting paid, then reasonable questions should be asked.  Was that their own idea or did someone lead them to that conclusion?  Whenever money comes into the equation, it's important to ask if someone is attempting to buy influence.  



It might not be as overt as a simple one-time instruction.  Look up "nudge theory".  It could be something subtle that happens gradually over time.  



Consensus arguments aside, they're certainly the ones who will ultimately be making sure that we aren't inadvertently handing any companies an advantage over their competitors.  I can imagine it's not always the easiest thing to spot, though.  What might seem like a completely innocuous inclusion in the code, could be the missing piece for something a company has been quietly building for years.

Bitcoin follows BIP, Bitcoin Improvement Proposal.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0001


The process is public, and transparent. Do you believe Coinbase could co-opt some of the Core developers, and manipulate the community to accept a Coinbase-BIP? Then the BIP system failed, what would be a better process to replace BIP?

Too late, unless the one taking the money is Satoshi he will probably be impaled with a sha512 stake and burned in the fire of 100 antminers.

Besides all drama, all the motifs, all the schemes, all the conspiracies, I have a genuine question, which from my point of view is quite logical in this situation.
If a company, which is not one of the most influential even in its own country, can with a pathetic $100k or $200k sabotage or bend the bitcoin code to fit its own agenda, doesn't it mean the current system is way to fragile?
@Royse777 I understood what you were trying to say, but let's actually take it from those words, would you guys entrust the economy of the world, all your relative's savings and business to a code that can be easily modified by somebody who just throws 100, 200 hell even 500k at the right person? If this indeed happens, (which I find it pretty hard to believe) it simply means that we humans can destroy everything and turn everything good into shit, so what would be the point of defending something as vulnerable and easy to abuse as our current system is abused by banks and governments?

As I said about numerous projects in the past, if bitcoin can be brought down by such a tiny amount, then there are serious flaws with it.
If it can't, why even bother about what a company can do? I see it as either black or white at this point.

many people actually made a lot of fuss about it for a long time. but all of it was buried under other more important drama called "scaling debate" so it went unnoticed. in some cases it was simply ignored because those who were making the fuss were also proposing bigger block size so that part of their argument were ignored because the "block size" dominated the disagreement.

essentially this is one of the reasons used by those who argue about the need to have independent alternative implementation of the protocol (other full nodes eg in another language written by entirely different developers).
so far the arguments against this is greater (they argue that it causes more problems than it solves).

Yes, the BIP system fragile, and the community stupid.

I believe every cynic about Coinbase's move didn't truly consider the process of how proposals are merged. I believe Core developers, among themselves, sometimes couldn't agree what's "BIPable".

I am with you completely stompix. Now that I have read more about what's happening here I feel very much concerned. We shall not be naive as we all know that money can be used as a powerful leverage.
I will be long gone before I will read on Coinbase site the following motto:
Bitcoin development - proudly sponsored by Coinbase :-[

Linux development story 2.0 in the making, if you know what I mean  ::) ::) ::)

I wouldn't say it could be "brought down".  Bitcoin is far too resilient for that.  But certain aspects could be weakened.  If Bitcoin is designed to be neutral and apolitical, it's best if external influence is kept to an absolute minimum.

In short, there's no reason to panic.  I certainly don't think these companies have a level of influence that would allow anything dangerous or malicious.  My instinct is that such companies will naturally be looking at ways to "stay ahead of the game" and it would reflect poorly on Bitcoin if they were seen to be abusing their position as sponsors in achieving that goal.

Not a major concern, but a concern nonetheless.

I meant "to be considered as acceptable" and be merged, then activated.

For instance a Core developer funded by Coinbase, suddenly authored a proposal for developing sharding in Bitcoin. ::)

Or it could also be sharding isn't a truly feasible way for scaling Bitcoin. Either way, I believe the fear, near FUD, behind Coinbase's move to fund Core developers is over the top.

I don't like to get this into politics however ETFbitcoin correctly said this is happening because bitcoiners, especially old ones, are conservative which in my humble opinion is good: I believe if bitcoin is here since 2009 after all that happened is due to the fact that its revolutionary march has been tough, smart and... slow  :) Like water carving a rock.
We all know how money can be used to change the direction of things.  ;)

I believe the Core developers just want the network to run for as long as it can, and scale out for as long as it possibly can, and be a robust multi-generational protocol for money for the internet.

Running Bitcoin Core is already "heavy" for most ordinary/"non-power" users. It would be better if Bitcoin's hardware requirements remained the same, and let the cheapest hardware available catch up.

Firstly, its good that coinbase sponsored two Bitcoin developers because this is what the community lacks back in the year 2016 and it will be good if we see more big crypto exchange site doing the same thing rather than just enriching their own pocket only. However, you guys are just aware of recent developers sponsored by coinbase cause they have been supporting new innovative crypto projects long ago.

For a technical user to build a machine from scratch, that would do. But costs go higher once you learn that an 1TB SSD, more powerful hardware, and more bandwidth are required to run a full node effortlessly. Plus I'm not talking about pruned nodes. More archival nodes, and make the Bitcoin blockchain more redundant.

In 5 years the hardware for the current requirements will be cheaper, and more available to more people all over the world.

Wow this sounds amazing. Contributing to bitcoin core itself is like a privilege and getting funded for it is like a bonus.
I feel happy for those developers as they are getting what they deserve for their efforts and time contributing towards bitcoin core.
I have also started walking on the path towards becoming a bitcoin core developer.
I have not started building any code yet since I am making my base strong by understanding the technicals of bitcoin.
I hope some day I will be able to give my contribution for the bitcoin community.



Yeah I know that a simple bug report or a simple code change would also be considered as a contribution but I am planning on to dive deep into bitcoin core.
This is why I thought of getting the basics well before I my contribution.

keep it up but know that you don't need deep understanding of the bitcoin technology to make good contribution to the open source community. for example a simple bug report is also a great contribution because it helps developers improve their code.

Start a blog in Medium, and please share your progress/development as a Bitcoin developer. It might inspire ordinary, non-technical people like me. Hahaha.

You can also get yourself added in this list, and accept donation from the community, https://bitcoindevlist.com

That's a good idea. I will soon start writing blogs on medium and share my progress towards bitcoin development.
This won't be a good time to add myself for a donation since I believe I haven't done much yet for the community.
I will let people recognize myself a bit and then in future I might add myself up on the list.
Till then let the other developers get paid for their efforts  :)

You see it's not about any ideology: the way it is now bitcoin works amazingly well. It does what it says since 11 years which is quite a great accomplishment having had to fight 24/7 from January 3rd 2009. I believe it is a robust protocol developed by some of the best minds on Earth.
Taking a conservative approach allowed the protocol and the network to grow in strength and resilience.
Whatever the word conservative means in all this I actually do not care so long as bitcoin works like this.
To conclude, I truly hope this move of sponsoring bitcoin devs it is what it is, only support nothing else.

You can also watch achow coding in real time in his Twitch channel, https://twitch.tv/videos/768401215

Start asking for advice there, I believe you can also make a donation. 8)


If the Core developers believed that it was better to experiment with "features", then I believe Bitcoin would have already forked before the Bitcoin Cash scam.

I think I got your point but I fail to see how that is connected with what I wanted to point out: actually do you know what? More than developers now we need people to fight into the real world where bitcoin battles every day. We do not need more devs, we need more nodes.
The network must be able to rapidly broadcast blocks to all nodes, right? Let's sponsor them, not developers

You don't need developers ?

If it weren't for the developers then bitcoin would not have been where it is today.
Even today the source code for bitcoin core has so many things to be improvised that the developers themselves want more developers to start contributing towards the bitcoin core source code.
Not every developer thinks in the same way and that's why many developers are needed so that together with their creative minds they can improvise the source code so much that bitcoin can be scalable in future.

I agree that many nodes are also needed as it will make the network stronger but that doesn't mean we don't need the developers anymore bud.
Both are needed as they both are important for the bitcoin network.

I got your original point, and it's the same standpoint that I've been pointing out in many of my posts. But I was merely pointing out another standpoint, which I believe is also connected to your original point. 8)

The "conservative" design decisons made by the Core developers, guarantees a robust, multi-generational-protocol. Integrating new "features", like "sharding" or features as simple as "8MB blocks" would require a hard fork, which not only risks of splitting the network, it might also break Bitcoin.


We need more nodes, but I don't believe sponsoring people who run nodes is a good idea. You should run a full node for yourself, because you want to validate your own transactions.

@Wind_FURY Alright, now I am with you there. You could have been more specific  ;D
@pawanjain Before posting crap read carefully as I have never said that we don't need developers.
You maybe right on this one: I personally do not need developers, Bitcoin does.  8)

Electrum is a wallet. We have plenty of them out there. Better having devs focused on core development. ;)

we actually have very few wallets that deserve to be called a "bitcoin wallet". many of them are closed source, poorly written, buggy, lack features,...
you also seem to be ignoring that electrum is being used by a great percentage of total bitcoin users. i dare say there are more people using electrum than there are running bitcoin core.

I didn't mean to offend you in any way bud but you had clearly said in your post that "We do not need more devs, we need more nodes."
This is what I wanted to point out that we need both of them to make the network stronger.
Everyone have their own perspective and I just gave my opinion on making the bitcoin network stronger.

You were also posting a contradictory statement by saying that you want more nodes to "rapidly broadcast blocks" around in network. You actually want fewer nodes. 8)