Exactly how does BTC development go on, if the current group all quits or dies?

[sirminesalot]

With an opensource project i think everyone could contribute to the project and keep the project developing.
I'm sure bitcoin devs community are solid and strong, the experts has already distributed and documented their knowledge about the developing best practice and patterns, so the new developers could continue the journey of development if the old devs are gone.
The technology has so much growth in recent years and i'm sure the future devs are gonna be better because it will always improving.

[Lucius]

Exactly how does BTC development continue if the current group all quits or dies?
(For example) Who takes over the ghost ship if COVID and the next 19 variants get a lot worse?

Oh no, another vector of attack on Bitcoin has opened up - as if there are only 1 or 2 developers on whom everything depends... Maybe the evil Chinese will create a covid-19 special strain that will attack only developers, then crypto miners, and finally all those who own BTC. But don't worry, after 22 doses of super-effective vaccines we will be safe from all possible strains of the virus

[NeuroticFish]

Thank you, now we are very close to the exact topic: A small group of core devs actually release the code, who takes over if they are gone?

Anyone in the world can take over the code and continue developing it and releasing it. This is the beauty of being open source.
The community will then decide if they want to use the new releases or not, based on what has been changed in the code (which should be again, publicly available).

So the question, as @Lucius also pointed out, is a non-question, probably meant to scare newbies.


TL;DR: There's no real issue there. Period.

[witcher_sense]

According to Developer Nation, there were more than 20 million software developers at the start of 2021. This number is expected to reach 45 million by the year 2030. In other words, the current supply of software developers is slightly less than the total supply of bitcoin, but its growth is much faster. Moreover, unlike in Bitcoin, the supply of developers is not capped nor fixed algorithmically. All things considered, the shortage of bitcoin developers is unlikely to take place in the foreseeable future.

I can think of two reasons, besides an unrealistic one which implies the death of all the software developers who have ever been considering contributing to bitcoin, why bitcoin development may stop. The first one is the development of bitcoin was finally complete. No one wants any changes anymore, everyone is feeling okay about the current state of the network. The second reason the development may stop is that people may lose their interest in bitcoin which is equivalent to the death of bitcoin. Surprisingly, but if no one considers bitcoin useful as a medium of exchange anymore, it will lose its value regardless of how many useful features were added to it.

[Nhazwrath]

Technically Bitcoin development stops if all the dev's stop or leave....

Thank you, now we are very close to the exact topic: A small group of core devs actually release the code, who takes over if they are gone?

its open source.  the codes already released.

There's no one in "control" of bitcoin.  The code is open source. Anyone can contribute.   The nature of the system is consensus, so You could add to it.   Here's the downside.  The node operators have to agree to your alterations or they simply do not run your version and you get a hard fork or whats known as a altcoin(you ALSO can be a node operator no one is stopping you).   If you look out there you will see that there is 10,000 alt coins. 

Not all of those coins are forks of bitcoin some are original code(they ARE a copy of the idea).  Most of them fail.  Right at about 99.995% failure

[franky1]

There's no one in "control" of bitcoin.  The code is open source. Anyone can contribute.   The nature of the system is consensus, so You could add to it.   Here's the downside.  The node operators have to agree to your alterations or they simply do not run your version and you get a hard fork or whats known as a altcoin(you ALSO can be a node operator no one is stopping you).   If you look out there you will see that there is 10,000 alt coins.  

to be a node operater/ independant dev that just 'follows' the current rules, yea anyone can make their own node thats wrote slightly different but still follows the main rules.
free range sheep can be happy playing in fields saying they are free... untill the see the shepherd and the barking dog..

but wanting to contribute to an upgrade/change.. well thats not an "anyone can do that" thing
you hinted that you have to get wide co-operation with the other node operators and devs or end up forking as an altcoin.OR be an accepted dev on cores github, and hope they like you enough to add your change to cores RC. both not as easy as people think. many idea's in github get rejected just by personality conflicts.

that alone shows its not as easy as you think. and not an anyone can do it.

secondly most of the other nodes are centralised to the "core" brand. and the devs of the core brand dont just let any old 'contributor' play around with a release candidate as they please. the top 6 devs have authority to accept or reject anything contributors put in. so there is a circle of 6 devs as management. and then ontop of them there is a single guy that does the compiling and verification of the release candidate.
so their actually is a central hierarchy that you wish to dismiss.. heck even that top guy(Wlad) admits he has too much authority and is a central point of failure for the project.

so if the 'consensus majority' are brand core, and a release of an update by core solely leans on the decision and signing authority of Wlad. then yes there is control. of bitcoin
Wlad doesnt want to abuse his control. but that does not mean its not there

[Lucius]

The OP seems to have created its concern from the following article :

Developer John Newbery and maintainer Samuel Dobson have stepped back from their duties working on the software that keeps Bitcoin running smoothly. And earlier this year, van der Laan, who’s listed as a lead maintainer, announced he was taking more of a “background role” on the project to help decentralize it.

If nothing else, they both announced that they would step back for a while due to other commitments, explaining that there are enough other developers and those who contribute to the project. A little fresh blood and new ideas will not hurt anyone

[Kakmakr]

Well I know Gavin gave the "key" to the Kingdom over to the Lead maintainer "Wladimir J. van der Laan" back in 2014.... so I guess he has a backup plan to give over the "key" to the next person IF something happens to him. This "key" is actually not a physical or virtual key, but just "rights" to privileged actions. (Like sending "emergency" broadcasts and certain repositories)

The succession plans/Disaster plans MUST be a secret .. because enemies of Bitcoin or crazy people will harm those people, IF they want to sabotage the experiment. (A single point of failure will be a target, if the enemy know who to take down)  

[barbara44]

The official BTC source code is currently updated by a group of Devs who contribute to the open source Bitcoin project.

Exactly how does BTC development continue if the current group all quits or dies?
(For example) Who takes over the ghost ship if COVID and the next 19 variants get a lot worse?

First of all, these developers are people who are living in different locations of the world. Realistically, people are not going to quit at the same time, and they are also not going to die at the same time, so your imagination is quite wrong.

If someone, let’s assume that the leader in the group, decides that they would want to quit, what they are going to do is to announce it that they are quitting from being part of the job and would like to hand over to someone else. It is then a responsibility for them to look for the right person who can take over the job and be able to walk up to the standard that the community would expect from he or she. And if one of the developers should also die, there are others there to replace him or her. That’s just how it works.

[geegaw]

With an opensource project i think everyone could contribute to the project and keep the project developing.
I'm sure bitcoin devs community are solid and strong, the experts has already distributed and documented their knowledge about the developing best practice and patterns, so the new developers could continue the journey of development if the old devs are gone.
The technology has so much growth in recent years and i'm sure the future devs are gonna be better because it will always improving.

In general, bitcoin is a toy that a lot of people can't heartlessly give up, so the hypothesis of groups giving up bitcoin is very unlikely, the only exception is that those people disappear forever by death but as mentioned, bitcoin stalkers are ubiquitous on the crypto market map, once one group stops developing bitcoin, another will emerge, even competing for control of bitcoin. This is already a vast ocean, the water will continue to lift this boat to the ends of the horizon, no one knows a fixed destination, only knowing everything will be eternal activity.

[fiulpro]

There are so many developers, there are so many people contributing to the development of Bitcoins, at the same time they do get paid directly and indirectly as well which does make this a wonderful option for many people to hang in there and improve the quality of Bitcoin in every aspect that there is.
If someone leaves then the position opens up for new people, which I do think would be managed by the already existing/left developers of the core and therefore I do think that it's not a really big deal if the developers decide to leave since many people would work for Bitcoin undoubtedly, it has a very strong community in case you haven't noticed the Bitcointalk.org has been growing as well, therefore I do think that it's about the support and knowledge which is plenty in the community.

[glendall]

I think, the cycle of bitcoin will not stop unless the world stops spinning as long as bitcoin is discussed there will definitely be a new successor to fill the void in one team,
we can see all this time sathosi no one knows who he is but BTC is still running towards the highest price
my friend, you don't have to worry now, I'm sure there will be many people who will save people who leave this bitcoin son as long as the world is still spinning and there is still time of day and night

[DarkDays]

The official BTC source code is currently updated by a group of Devs who contribute to the open source Bitcoin project.

Exactly how does BTC development continue if the current group all quits or dies?
(For example) Who takes over the ghost ship if COVID and the next 19 variants get a lot worse?



Edit: Updated based on early responses:

Technically Bitcoin development stops if all the dev's stop or leave....

Thank you, now we are very close to the exact topic: A small group of core devs actually release the code, who takes over if they are gone?

It is an interesting question to think about. While abandonment of Bitcoin maintenance could happen if something catastrophic was to take place like an alien invasion or something similar, the likelihood of it happening is low. This is because as long as Bitcoin is valuable and it's worth more than $0 people are going to try to use it in whichever way they can be it through mining, consensus etc.

Bottom line is as long s there is value associated with Bitcoin the above scenario is. highly unlikely to take place.

[24Kt]

There are so many developers, there are so many people contributing to the development of Bitcoins, at the same time they do get paid directly and indirectly as well which does make this a wonderful option for many people to hang in there and improve the quality of Bitcoin in every aspect that there is.
If someone leaves then the position opens up for new people, which I do think would be managed by the already existing/left developers of the core and therefore I do think that it's not a really big deal if the developers decide to leave since many people would work for Bitcoin undoubtedly, it has a very strong community in case you haven't noticed the Bitcointalk.org has been growing as well, therefore I do think that it's about the support and knowledge which is plenty in the community.

There will always be new generation that can take their place. If someone leaves, another one will get in. So yes, for me, that's not a problem. There will always be another hungry young blood that will be interested to work in this group. It is like someone leaving his job. There will always someone that will apply for that vacant position. As long as humanity exists, I believe, there will always be interested people to work on this kind of endeavor. So don't worry about this situation because it may not happen at all.

[franky1]

putting it simply with 'core' having the major power play on what new updates can change the protocol. agreed en-mass, quickly.

if Wlad disappeared without passing on access to the core github repo. or github just froze access to the github repo of core. bitcoin will continue under its current version, without updates for a while.

whilst devs then re-organise under a new development tool platform and regain the trust of the community that their new platform access of sourcecode/new versions has no bugs/flaw/trojans.

this will take a little time for a new trusted power base to form which can have the same power to make updates the community follow en-mass (auto-majority).

bitcoin wont cease to function as a network. just a lengthy delay between new updates

[Taskford]

There are so many developers, there are so many people contributing to the development of Bitcoins, at the same time they do get paid directly and indirectly as well which does make this a wonderful option for many people to hang in there and improve the quality of Bitcoin in every aspect that there is.
If someone leaves then the position opens up for new people, which I do think would be managed by the already existing/left developers of the core and therefore I do think that it's not a really big deal if the developers decide to leave since many people would work for Bitcoin undoubtedly, it has a very strong community in case you haven't noticed the Bitcointalk.org has been growing as well, therefore I do think that it's about the support and knowledge which is plenty in the community.

There will always be new generation that can take their place. If someone leaves, another one will get in. So yes, for me, that's not a problem. There will always be another hungry young blood that will be interested to work in this group. It is like someone leaving his job. There will always someone that will apply for that vacant position. As long as humanity exists, I believe, there will always be interested people to work on this kind of endeavor. So don't worry about this situation because it may not happen at all.

We can say it is knowing bitcoin adoption evolves and this will not go exclusively to the person who currently knows it, we know mainstream media is slowly reporting bitcoin and some other channels especially movies includes bitcoin name on some script so there's no surprise that we can see new generation of investors as years go past on it so we shouldn't worry about such things since whenever there's someone stop using it another huge numbers will come since there's a lot of opportunity on bitcoin.

[Sled]

Developers leave and come, many of commits to a lot of open source projects can come from randoms, there's just maintainers that merge code and decide what gets in to an official release.

And once they die/leave, many would like to replace them voluntarily. This makes no worry for us if ever happens as it still continues to exist like the creator leaves and we all thinking that Bitcoin dies then but it finds different, we even growing and spreading more. The same thing we probably see and I could assume that it is even more appreciated as these replacements will give more and continue the development of the said project.

[jrrsparkles]

There will be new one who will continue the development and bitcoin is not having any issues at all for now so the transactions will be smooth even if the time taken for the development is more longer. Already most replies made it clear there is such thing called core developer, anyone who is willing to do can do it.

[AML Soap]

putting it simply with 'core' having the major power play on what new updates can change the protocol. agreed en-mass, quickly.

if Wlad disappeared without passing on access to the core github repo. or github just froze access to the github repo of core. bitcoin will continue under its current version, without updates for a while.

whilst devs then re-organise under a new development tool platform and regain the trust of the community that their new platform access of sourcecode/new versions has no bugs/flaw/trojans.

this will take a little time for a new trusted power base to form which can have the same power to make updates the community follow en-mass (auto-majority).

bitcoin wont cease to function as a network. just a lengthy delay between new updates

Thank you for those newbie friendly details, if I had rep to give you I would.