According to a recent post to this forum at least 2 of the 5 core developers, Gregory Maxwell and Pieter Wuille, are members of a bitcoin-related company.
Regardless of what this company does, it seems like a huge conflict of interest to me for core devs to be getting money from a bitcoin company.
The other poster claimed the nature of the business that Maxwell and Wuille belong to, is such that it would benefit from Bitcoin processing transactions slower (apparently the company speeds up transactions somehow), so the slower Bitcoin QT is, the more customers might be interested in their company.
I have no idea if this is true or not, but at the end of the day it really doesn't matter. Just as a matter of principle core devs should not be allowed to be engaging in profit-making enterprises that are affected by Bitcoin development policy.
I think you are right, but at the same time I think both Gmaxwell and Gavin are legitimate on their approaches to solve this problem. Even if the Blockstream-LN thing is a business within itself, I think they both are legitimate within their intents to make BTC better. They would gain nothing doing otherwise anyway.
