[2023-02-22] Bitcoin Core Developer Marco Falke Steps Down From Maintainer Role

[zasad@]

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/bitcoin-core-developer-marco-falke-steps-down-from-maintainer-role-1032117170
Bitcoin Core developer, Marco Falke – the platform’s most prolific contributor – will step down from his maintainer role this summer, he wrote in a tweet published Feb. 21.

Falke racked up more than 2,000 suggested software changes known as "commits" over his seven-year tenure as a Bitcoin Core contributor. For three of those seven years, Falke’s efforts were funded by crypto exchange Okcoin and Web3 investment firm Paradigm.

The storied developer reaffirmed his passion for Bitcoin and said he was “positive about the future,” but that his role was no longer a good fit.

“I am happy about my achievements,” Falke wrote. “And recognize that they would not have been possible without my sponsors.”

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[DaveF]

Or another way to put it....
Another developer has filled out his CV as best as he can doing this and is now looking to move to a job that is going to pay him mid 6 figures for just showing up to work.
You reach a point in your life when you want the steady 9 to 5 with benefits and everything else. It's tough to keep moving along a path like this knowing that your benefactors ( Okcoin  and Paradigm ) can stop supporting you and there is nothing you can do about it.

-Dave

[goldkingcoiner]

Or another way to put it....
Another developer has filled out his CV as best as he can doing this and is now looking to move to a job that is going to pay him mid 6 figures for just showing up to work.
You reach a point in your life when you want the steady 9 to 5 with benefits and everything else. It's tough to keep moving along a path like this knowing that your benefactors ( Okcoin  and Paradigm ) can stop supporting you and there is nothing you can do about it.

-Dave

Wow that is a very realistic and depressive way to put it. But maybe the benefits outweigh the risks depending on the subjective perspective of said developer on how much money he needs to live a good life, even if they throw him out of the boat?

He would have to take a large gamble that he will be kept on for at least a good 5-10 years to get enough money together to live how he wants (but not considerably rich) until old age takes him?

After earning that much money, anything else becomes unnecessary unless you have dreams of becoming a centi-millionaire by age 70.

[DaveF]

Or another way to put it....
Another developer has filled out his CV as best as he can doing this and is now looking to move to a job that is going to pay him mid 6 figures for just showing up to work.
You reach a point in your life when you want the steady 9 to 5 with benefits and everything else. It's tough to keep moving along a path like this knowing that your benefactors ( Okcoin  and Paradigm ) can stop supporting you and there is nothing you can do about it.

-Dave

Wow that is a very realistic and depressive way to put it. But maybe the benefits outweigh the risks depending on the subjective perspective of said developer on how much money he needs to live a good life, even if they throw him out of the boat?

He would have to take a large gamble that he will be kept on for at least a good 5-10 years to get enough money together to live how he wants (but not considerably rich) until old age takes him?

After earning that much money, anything else becomes unnecessary unless you have dreams of becoming a centi-millionaire by age 70.

Taking a bit of a US attitude here, since I can't speak for the rest of the world. it's not just the money. Want to get a mortgage self employed people find it more difficult to get one then people with a regular job. Even if they make more working for themselves. Same with trying to get other forms of finance, even credit cards. Sometimes it's just nice knowing you are working in an environment where you can take a couple of weeks of for something and there are other developers / programmers on task to keep things going. When working on something like BTC although I can't be certain I can see it being more of a constant non stop thing that does burn you out.

-Dave

[Kakmakr]

I think a lot of these Bitcoin developers are bored with the project... because it is mature and secure and there are not a lot of challenges to keep them busy. Yes, it is a huge responsibility and an honor to work for the strongest token, but after a while the novelty of that wears off and they start looking for other opportunities to stimulate them.

We see a lot of them being targeted by CW and also some governments, so it must take a toll on them. Let's appreciate their commitment to this experiment and wish them the best in their endeavors. 

[Carlton Banks]

I think a lot of these Bitcoin developers are bored with the project... because it is mature and secure and there are not a lot of challenges to keep them busy.

it seems to me that there are a few challenges yet

• more network partition resistance
• obfuscating the bitcoin protocol over the public internet
• the eventual direction for additional throughput scaling

all are in the works, but they're long term projects that aren't really gradual changes. The mailing list is still busy, so I think it's safe to say that these big projects will both continue and proliferate.

but as far as the big job of getting the codebase more sensibly structured, alot of the work is now done, and many parts might now stay the same long into the future. you can see the results of that with the so-called kernel project; it probably wouldn't have been possible to start the kernel library (which is just the consensus logic factored out into a standalone library) if the codebase wasn't slowly tidied up and consolidated over time.


Marco's job was to oversee alot of that churning consolidation over the year as an expert on the c++ language. I can see how he might find now a good time to move on from maintaining, as there will be less need for that kind of role which seemed to suit him so well. he's still active on the project though, so this is more what you could call "shuffling" roles instead of "moving on" outright

[NotATether]

• obfuscating the bitcoin protocol over the public internet

I was thinking, instead of the widely-discussed TLS certificates method which has a lot of disadvantages, that nodes create their own private key for communication, and then encrypt all traffic between two nodes using session keys generated by ECDH, and the private key would be rotated whenever the node restarts (or loses connection to all other nodes). Then you wouldn't need a certificate authority to guarantee anything - nodes can choose to directly trust each other.

This could eventually morph into a web of trust of some sort, where transactions and blocks that are relayed can be confirmed to have been sent to particular nodes and thus propagated.

[Carlton Banks]

I was thinking, instead of the widely-discussed TLS certificates method which has a lot of disadvantages, that nodes create their own private key for communication, and then encrypt all traffic between two nodes using session keys generated by ECDH, and the private key would be rotated whenever the node restarts (or loses connection to all other nodes). Then you wouldn't need a certificate authority to guarantee anything - nodes can choose to directly trust each other.

This could eventually morph into a web of trust of some sort, where transactions and blocks that are relayed can be confirmed to have been sent to particular nodes and thus propagated.

i don't remember that there was an authentication part to the proposal (which is BIP324), probably not??

a web of trust system would be great, although probably difficult to get right. once the BIP324 stuff is running on the network, we will see how it evolves (pretty sure it's not the last change to node connections we'll see in bitcoin)

[Pity Token]

I think it needs those semi-retired types who have already succeeded in life, got or paid off their mortgages, and just looking to do something great i.e. make a name for themselves before going 6 feet under.

I'm sure Marco will be massively missed and hard to replace, but hopefully there is someone there that can take over the mantle