Revoke Gloria Zhao's permission to accept changes to Core?

[gmaxwell]

There's this flawed perception that bitcoin is somewhat a "democracy", and Bitcoin Core developers' positions are selected based on public merit, and are subject to scrutiny. In reality, Bitcoin Core is an open-source project where influence is determined by informal hierarchies, long-term involvement, and trust among a relatively small group of contributors. If people can't grasp this simple fact, they have every right to stop running Bitcoin Core, and go run something else.

It's s surprising how many people 'in bitcoin' are just utterly obsessed with controlling the choices and actions of unrelated third parties.  Bitcoin Core devs are perhaps a little at fault for being too sparing in handing out well deserved "go fuck yourself" responses.

[franky1]

core devs with merge privilege should not behave like a tyrannical government of bitcoin. especially when the things they merge actually cause JUNK data to be allowed*, and then double down by then opening up other methods to add junk without sealing the original faults they cause. they should instead act like developers with the intent to make bitcoin as lean as possible for its sole function of lean transactions of moving satoshis

*even before segwit(which started the main junk data allowable reasons) was merged and activated, i warned the core devs that it would allow junk, and they played social drama distraction games to ignore the warning, because their aim was to allow it to then promote other network their employers created for profit

core devs pretend they are doing it to be anti censorship, but then performing other code merges that then make doing lean legacy transactions more difficult, with the aim to eventually censor legacy utility entirely is hypocritical to their pretense

also to note the OP did not say ban glozows merge privilege because she is female.. it was because of the crap she allows to be added into the reference client which then becomes part allowing more junk to become 'consensus'

then we have her colleagues pretend this discussion is not a code driven reason but a gender driven reason, which is just the distraction of social drama, hiding their desire of the wanting the crap code she merged to continue by pretending anyone against it must be some sexist pig. even though the reason has nothing to do with her gender

its especially apparent when the moderators of multiple bitcoin core discussion platforms/categories are also the same bitcoin core devs that have caused multiple controversies about the code they force-merge in..
these same group of core devs acting as governors and moderators of bitcoin code/discussion do not want to be accountable to the code they merge, and instead want to just turn discussions into social drama to brush things under the rug so they can continue governing bitcoins ruleset/consensus allowances and add whatever they want unchallenged

we need to get back to the simple code of lean transactions that do one purpose, which is obviously transacting satoshi's

bitcoin worked(past tense) best due to rules that nodes follow, rules that should secure the blockchain efficiently.. core devs however seem to act like sponsored governors slowly trying to ruin bitcoins original purpose, solely to then advertise other networks as solutions to problems THEY created within bitcoin

[PepeLapiu]

My understanding is that a core dev (Antoine Poinsot) meet a Citrea guy and Citrea said they would need to put 144 bytes of arb data on chain. And Poinsot told him he's change that for him.

All the other excuses came up after the protests started to happen. The idea of preventing centralization, increasing fee estimatiion, reducing UTXO bloat, those were all invented because they could not bring themselves to admit they were doing it for one specific company.

If they had doubled the data size from 80 to 160 bytes, I think we could have debated that. But instead they blew it up to 1250x the original limit. In fact that is the max limit baked into the cake. Had they been able to increase it to 1 mb, I believe they would have done it.

It's a disgrace really.

Core has been marked as deprecated.

[BayAreaCoins]

Anddddddd she's "gone".

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/34517

[PepeLapiu]

There's this flawed perception that bitcoin is somewhat a "democracy", and Bitcoin Core developers' positions are selected based on public merit, and are subject to scrutiny. In reality, Bitcoin Core is an open-source project where influence is determined by informal hierarchies, long-term involvement, and trust among a relatively small group of contributors. If people can't grasp this simple fact, they have every right to stop running Bitcoin Core, and go run something else.

What you conveniently forget to mention is core funding. Where do they get their funds?
Whoever that is, you will find who core serves. And the top donor is BlockStream along with a few other shitcoin companies.

Anddddddd she's "gone".
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/34517

I don't think that changes anything. We all should ask ourselves how a rookie coder and a shitcoin promoteur ended up climbing the core lather so fast ahead a way more experienced devs within core.

[NotATether]

Anddddddd she's "gone".

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/34517

You know I don't think this will be a good thing to happen in hindsight unless there are other volunteers who want to maintain the repository of Core on a regular basis.

In open-source in general, people have an aversion to long, menial tasks, so the expected short-term result of this is probably going to be less features added to Core over time if this trend of developers leaving continues.

[BayAreaCoins]

Anddddddd she's "gone".

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/34517

You know I don't think this will be a good thing to happen in hindsight unless there are other volunteers who want to maintain the repository of Core on a regular basis.

In open-source in general, people have an aversion to long, menial tasks, so the expected short-term result of this is probably going to be less features added to Core over time if this trend of developers leaving continues.

I think we can drop the "volunteer" word officially and probably should have since 2011-2012.  I think almost every Bitcoin developer these days isn't truly independent — they're on someone's payroll.

It sounds warm-hearted, but it's total propaganda bullshit in this day and age.

I'm sure the right amount of money will find another "volunteer" just fine.


Read the Epstein emails if you have any doubt that there isn't a line of sleezy Billionaires willing to lay out a few pennies for developers to take.

Greg, any comment on Epstein's money?  👀 (Greg was the CTO of Blockstream when Epstein started cutting them checks)

[Satofan44]

Anddddddd she's "gone".

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/34517

Merited by a malicious Turkish troll version of franky1. This is not a good thing, no matter in what way you may want to twist it. This does not come as a result of her doing something wrong as OP implied, quite the contrary -- it comes as a result of the malicious users and Knots trolls who have driven away yet another valuable contribution. The number of malicious lies that were spread about her for not doing absolutely anything wrong is a pathetic display of many individuals. Core needs to become even stricter and allow even less input by those who do not contribute or do not have sufficient knowledge, meritocracy all the way.

I think we can drop the "volunteer" word officially and probably should have since 2011-2012.  I think almost every Bitcoin developer these days isn't truly independent — they're on someone's payroll.

Nonsense, nobody is being paid to be a maintainer. People are paid to be developers, aside from some voluntary contributions most are now being. However, the maintainer role is terrible and it just shows how many users who have infested Bitcoin are malicious. Instead of increasing the gratitude shown to those that choose to take this role, they are being criticized and maliciously attacked for doing this work. Furthermore, it is impossible to be directly offered money to become a maintainer. Just because you have a sponsor, that does not mean that you will be allowed to become a maintainer.

Read the Epstein emails if you have any doubt that there isn't a line of sleezy Billionaires willing to lay out a few pennies for developers to take.

Greg, any comment on Epstein's money?  👀 (Greg was the CTO of Blockstream when Epstein started cutting them checks)

You can ask luke-jr about his CSAM collection instead, and any user that is running or advertising Knots wants to build their own collection through the CSAM committee.

In open-source in general, people have an aversion to long, menial tasks, so the expected short-term result of this is probably going to be less features added to Core over time if this trend of developers leaving continues.

There is nothing good about this. Her work as a maintainer was impeccable. As you can observe in patterns, criticism does not come from other experienced contributors but very often from people who have never contributed a single thing to Bitcoin -- instead, they were mostly here as parasites only taking away value and sometimes causing harm. A classic telltale of the incompetent individual with low intelligence.

[PepeLapiu]

(...)

You are just too funny.
One of the core devs (Peter Todd) is actively distributing software built to maximize spam on bitcoin.
Zhao openly referred to spam as "use cases we have today" and she implied Satoshi failed to make room for these "use cases".
Zhao openly disrespected and insulted bitcoiners who don't buy into other shitcoins.
Zhao, who was responsible for the mempool policy of 99% of the network at the time, admitted she doesn't care or understand the monetary aspect of bitcoin.
Virtually every dev at core had more experience and more time at core than she did, yet she went above all of their heads for some magical reason.
The entire time of this 4 year spam attack, core has completely failed to recpngnize there is even a problem occurring. And going as far as rejecting filters and blowing up existing filters.

Core, if they want to stay relevent, will need major introspection and rethinking.

[BayAreaCoins]

Nonsense, nobody is being paid to be a maintainer.

Peter Todd

"cyberbully"

Eh, if people saying mean things on the internet is too much for you, do you really belong in a trusted position for a $1.3 trillion currency?

Have some courage and grit... I mean, damn, friends of mine are literally risking their lives in combat for far less pay.

https://x.com/peterktodd/status/2019619953801048195

[ABCbits]

--snip--

It's publicly known some Bitcoin developer receive donation, grant or employed by someone else, even from many years ago. Here are few examples,
Who Funds Bitcoin Core Development? How the Industry Supports Bitcoin’s ‘Reference Client’ (2016 article)
Who Funds Bitcoin Development? (2020 article)
Who Funds Bitcoin Development? (website with data from 2014)

Besides, it's common to see open source development receive funding from big company or influential people.

[Kruw]

Nonsense, nobody is being paid to be a maintainer.

Peter Todd

Peter Todd isn't a Core maintainer. He maintains his own fork of Bitcoin called "Librerelay".

[Satofan44]

Peter Todd

"cyberbully"

Eh, if people saying mean things on the internet is too much for you, do you really belong in a trusted position for a $1.3 trillion currency?

Have some courage and grit... I mean, damn, friends of mine are literally risking their lives in combat for far less pay.

https://x.com/peterktodd/status/2019619953801048195

Useless sexist take on the matter by somebody who has barely contributed anything to Bitcoin in the recent years. There is absolutely no reason for which a toxic environment should be allowed, let alone fostered. Nobody needs to deal this, especially in positions where they should be receiving praise and gratitude and which are not inherently toxic or violent. People who are in voluntarily in combat roles are in combat roles because of their personality traits (or lack of better competence, hence lowly paid), especially negative ones, match the violence that goes on there. Apples should be green because watermelons are yellow. That is the quality level of his comparison.

Nonsense, nobody is being paid to be a maintainer.

Peter Todd

Peter Todd isn't a Core maintainer. He maintains his own fork of Bitcoin called "Librerelay".

I am not sure whether he necessarily wanted to state that Peter Todd is a Core maintainer, I think instead he wanted to provide the comments of Peter Todd on this matter. In any case, Todd is also an useless idiot.   Nevertheless, nobody is being paid to be a maintainer and that is an indisputable fact.

[PepeLapiu]

Besides, it's common to see open source development receive funding from big company or influential people.

Common or not, it's a problem. Because than core is not working for the network, or for the nodes, but rather for those big companies. And that is a problem.

Nevertheless, nobody is being paid to be a maintainer and that is an indisputable fact.

I'm not so sure about that. I believe maintainers are getting paid.

[gmaxwell]

Greg, any comment on Epstein's money?  👀 (Greg was the CTO of Blockstream when Epstein started cutting them checks)

I'm trying to figure out if I worked for blockstream on the dates in the emails or not-- unfortunately for document retention policy reasons I mostly don't have records as far back as 2014-- I probably did as in july they asked me to join though I'm not sure when I actually did-- but in any case I had no idea about any investment from JE when it happened.  With few exceptions I didn't have contact with investors much less people backing VC funds.

I had known blockstream had investment from Ito's fund-- Ito was head of MIT media lab and on the board of the New York times, I'd had limited contact with him years before bitcoin in the context of Wikimedia, pretty reputable.  Because of the indirection of funds startups often don't have a clear understanding of investors and even when they know their names they usually aren't doing background checks on them except for the most significant ones and a 2% investor isn't very significant.

If you'd missed it, blockstream didn't use and returned those funds within a couple months: https://x.com/adam3us/status/2018069917967233443

Blockstream went through significant effort to try to exclude particular sleazy people from the cryptocurrency space like Roger Ver and Brock Pierce.  (Pierce managed to sneak in by being a silent partner at block chain capital).  I think this was pretty courageous of the company as it risked (and I think caused) significant retaliation.  Funding was oversubscribed and already people were excluded for being less dubious than JE, so I don't doubt that JE would have been excluded by management right at the gate if they really knew about his background but in any case he still got kicked out shortly after.

I don't think JE had any particular thoughts on bitcoin, from what I've heard from others he was into the idea of creating an inflationary cryptocurrency in order to provide universal basic income to everyone on earth--  basically just the kind of pap the no-consequences-class likes to idly speculate about over their caviar lunch or whatever.  For him I think it was purely about having interesting things to talk about with his famous/powerful/connected acquaintances.  While JE was no doubt a sick piece of trash it's important to keep in mind that even axe murderers spend most of their time doing the same stuff that anyone else does and their whole life won't revolve around the things that make them different from other people.

As far as the discussion about volunteer contributors-- I think most contributors to bitcoin core by numbers are personally volunteers, but those who aren't (which includes many of the most prolific) mostly work for orgs like brink or chaincode which are themselves sponsorship orgs.  E.g. bitcoin investors and enthusiasts pooling resources to hire developers.  That's still volunteerism but one level abstracted.

Even for people who are paid by volunteer sponsors you should keep in mind any of them could get a high six figure job working for amazon, google, facebook, etc.  where they wouldn't be subject to any public abuse/harassment or bizarre threats.  Harassing the devs will tend to exclude ones who are doing it for good or benign reasons and leave the space open for malicious parties.  Someone who is hoping for a billion dollar windfall when they eventually backdoor the wallet after all the good reviewers and developers are driven out really won't care how many names you call them, and they'll probably just do everything they can to avoid your attention at all.

[FortuneFollower]

Screw Core. It has been run by a clown show circus for the last several years and keeps getting worse with every new version.
No offense to real clowns. Zhao isn't the only buffoon in the Core-tard circus act. You can remove one buffoon only to be replaced by another.

It is a futile exercise. At this point Core is compromised and beyond fixing. It is malware and you can't fix malware,
and they aren't even pretending anymore. IMO the only sensible solution is for nodes to switch to Knots while supporting
the development of a soft fork as proposed by Adam Back, Nick Szabo, Samson Mow, etc.

You found each other with the OP. Now kiss.

[Satofan44]

As far as the discussion about volunteer contributors-- I think most contributors to bitcoin core by numbers are personally volunteers, but those who aren't (which includes many of the most prolific) mostly work for orgs like brink or chaincode which are themselves sponsorship orgs.  E.g. bitcoin investors and enthusiasts pooling resources to hire developers.  That's still volunteerism but one level abstracted.

Even for people who are paid by volunteer sponsors you should keep in mind any of them could get a high six figure job working for amazon, google, facebook, etc.  where they wouldn't be subject to any public abuse/harassment or bizarre threats.  Harassing the devs will tend to exclude ones who are doing it for good or benign reasons and leave the space open for malicious parties.  Someone who is hoping for a billion dollar windfall when they eventually backdoor the wallet after all the good reviewers and developers are driven out really won't care how many names you call them, and they'll probably just do everything they can to avoid your attention at all.

Exactly, that is why this kind of approach and toxicity to these people -- whoever they are at the time of its occurrence -- is extremely wrong. Nobody should be subject to such treatment when they are doing work for which they should be put on a pedestal and thanked daily. Most often the criticism comes from users who have never contributed to Bitcoin at all. This is one of the downsides of this being a decentralized and open system, and if we tolerate this kind of abusive behavior to our "heroes" (no individual authorities or personality-cults as that is dangerous too, but Bitcoin Core as a whole) it will continue to have a subtle damaging effect that is only going to compound in the long term. I generally find it quite terrible that people have gotten so entitled and want to get involved in just about any topic, as if the end user of any well functioning IT company has any interaction with the engineering team at all. They don't listen to them, they don't interact with them, and it is like this for a very good reason. They are way too many smartasses and "independent thinkers" that have absolutely no fucking clue about any of these things, and the ability to chat with LLMs make this even worse.

Core needs to become even stricter and allow even less input by those who do not contribute or do not have sufficient knowledge, meritocracy all the way.

Nevertheless, nobody is being paid to be a maintainer and that is an indisputable fact.

I'm not so sure about that. I believe maintainers are getting paid.

No, you are confusing things. Just because I am doing something else in my role that does not mean that I am being paid for it. People are being paid to develop, that is it. Those that become maintainers are doing extra work of high responsibility, but there is no job offer for maintainers. If it were that easy, it would be dangerous.

[gmaxwell]

I think it's good to take input from anyone with something well considered to add.  Not mandatory, not ethically required, but just prudent.

You're getting duped by people here howling that core didn't listen to users. It *did*.  It didn't listen to the particular people yelling about, or rather it listened to them and concluded their position didn't beat the counterarguments.  It also listened to other users-- people who said block propagation matters that utxo bloat incentives matter that the changes wouldn't increase spam (and as we can now see, they didn't)-- and found their positions persuasive.  Just as the majority of node operators must have given that the most recent versions of Bitcoin core soundly outnumber knots.

Prior to fixing the op_return filtering core was seriously fucking up and doing so in a way that undermined my confidence:  0RTT block propagation had fallen off a cliff.  Developers knew it was fucked and refrained from fixing it because they knew they'd be attacked by Luke-jr and his spam obsessed paid promotional team at Ocean and didn't want to deal with the drama.

Fortunately, they did eventually overcome it and do the right thing.  This restored confidence in the project in myself and others who understand the issues.  ---  but you don't hear from the people who are happy, you hear from the delusional maniacs howling into the night.

When they scream that core doesn't listen to users what they're actually angry about is that core listened to other users and not their angry ignorant threat hurling minority and their unsound arguments predicated on bile and personal attacks.

[Kruw]

Fortunately, they did eventually overcome it and do the right thing.  This restored confidence in the project in myself and others who understand the issues.  ---  but you don't hear from the people who are happy, you hear from the delusional maniacs howling into the night.

Core should have delivered the killing blow by deprecating (& subsequently removing) the datacarrier options as planned. Unfortunately, the delusional maniacs succeeded in bullying Core into extending support for a setting that targets their scapegoats with censorship:  https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/33453

[PepeLapiu]

Core should have delivered the killing blow by deprecating (& subsequently removing) the datacarrier options as planned. Unfortunately, the delusional maniacs succeeded in bullying Core into extending support for a setting that targets their scapegoats with censorship:  https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/33453

You are just too much!

I have yet to hear a single good arguement to blow up a spam filter.

The claim is that citrea would like to use larger op_return of 150B. And so they blew it up to 1250 larger at 100,000B.And when they got heat about it, they started to claim that filter doesn't work.

So if the filter doesn't work, why would we need to blow it up for citrea to use large op_return?