Happy to discuss all things Bitcoin development, funding, etc for the next hour or so.
What do you want to know?
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Happy to discuss all things Bitcoin development, funding, etc for the next hour or so.
What do you want to know?
The ETFs and Microstrategy both have been fairly quiet about protocol matters. Do you believe they will try to exert more influence on Bitcoin protocol in the future? And if so, do you expect this to be via grant-making or funding?
I think those organizations have an interest in retaining Bitcoin's properties and will only become "active" when a substantial threat to those properties emerge. I think quantum is such a threat and would expect them to become involved in some capacity.
They would be a different sort of participant than has been traditionally involved in Bitcoin, but Im hopeful they can participate thoughtfully. Hopefully lessons from NYA and the like are in their mind if they choose to get involved.
I think funding is one option. But for quantum also they have an incentive to combat quantum FUD, overclaims on quantum capabilities, and the understated Bitcoin development/research work so far.
Are you really feel a threat (for Bitcoin) from QC ?
The fog off war is thick.
I think an in case of emergency break glass solution, even if not deployed, is reasonable at some point. Its entirely possible it never materializes.
I am from the future... I saw the scam long before anyone else :)
Good, phew.
We have two soft forks that have been scheduled for 2026: BIP 110 and Paul Sztorc's "ecash" fork. Do you think either of them will be very disruptive?
There are actually three soft forks signaling right now, and Sztorc’s ecash is a hard fork/forkcoin, not a soft fork.
What's the third one?
The three are:
See, e.g.: #1461045
@optimism: Didn’t realize that you stopped those until now! How are we going to keep up with that without your posts telling us?
Didn't stop, I have a backlog (because of a bug and didn't have time to fix it yet)
thank you for the clarification
No.
Do you think enough people outside dev circles understand how much coordination it takes to maintain Bitcoin Core?
Id say engineering work rather than coordination, but my answer is no.
a common observation in the space is that Brink and similar funders tend to support younger devs more often.
How does Brink think about this balance? Are there any intentional approaches to support a broader range of experience levels and viewpoints?
And how do you think Brink should manage or counter this perception? What kind of data or metrics could be tracked and shared with the wider community to build more trust in the process?
Or maybe Brink doesn’t worry about it much. there will always be criticism, and with multiple funders in the ecosystem, these things tend to balance out overall.
Brink funds both hebasto and fanquake who both contributed for many years before Brink funded them. So Im not entirely sure the generalization is true. And to your point, I do think there is balance in this regard.
We do fund newer contributors as well, especially through out designed-to-fund-newer-contributor fellowship program.
I suppose someone could do analysis to see average tenure of funded engineers per org. But I wouldnt expect Brink would be funding less-experienced engineers on average.
Its not clear why engineers that are "more flexible and open to new ideas" would be desirable for Brink or Bitcoin. Brink doesnt direct engineers' work and the valuable ideas in Bitcoin are mostly old ideas and principles, and more often boring and not new.
look at our reports
https://brink.dev/blog/2026/03/26/engineering-impact-report-2025/
If you know OG Bitcoin Core developers that are looking for funding, please let me know, but I dont think there are any that are not funded.
Sometimes I feel a sentiment towards OG bitcoin devs that they already have enough BTC (funding) to keep going. I think is a bit wrong sentiment. Even that are OGs, maybe they didn't accumulate enough BTC these years or they do not have the proper rails to live off those BTC...
Indeed, I am somekind of OG myself (not dev) and I know personally an OG from veeeery early days (ObiWan that introduced me to Bitcoin) that have even more BTC than Saylor.
But you see, OGs are kind of something else than regular bitcoiners (the 2020 generation) do not understand so well... and many are still trying to keep those values or the early days.
Who is your favorite technical communicator?
Jonas Nick came to mind first on this.
But of course I'd be remiss to not mention my Optech co-host Murch as well.
What's the most surprising thing you've learned doing Optech?
Pleasantly surprised how many developers and researchers we are able to get as guests on the podcast to explain their ideas first hand. That wasn't clearly going to be the case when we started it.
It seems like most funding in Bitcoin protocol development is channeled through non-profits. Do you think there will ever be a model where private companies hire individuals to work directly on protocol development?
I know folks have had this idea over the years. I think Balaji said something like each company will have their own Bitcoin Core developer on salary, which is probably the extreme version.
Blockstream had many open source Bitcoin engineers on staff over the years. But it doesnt seem that the idea has taken off more broadly. Perhaps there is a stigma about private companies funding open source Bitcoin Core developers. Or there is administrative overhead, or reputation risk if they fund the "wrong" one. What do you think?
I do not see that as so extreme. I think is reasonable. The only thing is who will decide what these developers will implement in the Bitcoin code.
don't see it as extreme either.
In fact, if and when Bitcoin gets big, having a dedicated dev deeply involved in Bitcoin will probably become pretty normal for large companies rather than not.
After all, we'd generally find it more acceptable for big companies to direct resources toward common goods — Bitcoin being one — than not to. It's like how we expect them to contribute to the Linux kernel.
If we are talking about Bitcoin Core developers, its hard for me to imagine the idea of Quaker Oats having a Bitcoin Core developer as realistic.
If we are talking about someone on staff having general Bitcoin technical knowledge in a hyperbitcoinized world, sure.
sorry to say it, but that will happen only when people will understand Darth's memes :)
IIRC it was literally every company in the world or some such thing.
I dont think it is realistic.
IMHO every company involved somehow (in this transition period) into Bitcoin should participate at least to a fund for Bitcoin development like OpenSats or whatever.
Is preferable to NOT pay taxes to criminals but paying a small % to open source devs.
The perception I get from popular discourse (and which is a view I don't hold myself) is that Bitcoin protocol development is supposed to be free from self-interested motivations.
I don't know if very many private companies feel this so strongly that they refrain from trying to work on really central stuff in bitcoin or if there is some other reason.
Some of the label BIP work done by Craig Raw or the two recent wallet metadata BIPs by pythcoiner might be good examples of private orgs pushing forward work that benefits themselves and the protocol as a whole.
But I have a feeling that private companies are reluctant to be seen to be attempting to "change" bitcoin.
I'd like to see more companies advocating for the changes they need/want to see (for instance, in the case of covenants). Not because Bitcoin will end up adopting these changes, but because I think it helps to be able to identify motives clearly.
When it comes to FOSS developers, I have a hard time evaluating why they advocate for or against any given change.
I think some of the work on top of L1 Bitcoin that you mention, like Craig Raw's work, is great and perfect for championing by private companies.
Perhaps. Or Bitcoin Core work is just something that "someone else" does, both in the tragedy of the commons sense, but also in the specialization sense.
Do you run a Bitcoin node?
locally or iN tHe cLoUd?
what version of Bitcoin node do you run?
pruned or full node?
is it always on or do you leave and rejoin the network?
do you run it over tor, i2p, clearnet or via a vpn?
do you run any filters on your node?
do you assumevalid?
why do you or dont run a node?
Im locally running (stock settings) Bitcoin Core version v31.0.0rc1 since I was testing it and haven't taken the time to update.
but this is an interesting question: how frequently would you update?
(I find that I am lagging somewhat behind new releases)
Totally depends on your usage. If youre learning and playing around, build off master or a PR branch to try things out and provide feedback. If you're Coinbase run many nodes of many versions probably.
Will close this out for now. But Ill get pinged with any replies, so feel free to post more.
Thanks a bunch for making the time for this!
What do you wish to see funded more? What's stopping it?
Better privacy.
Nothing. (Although I think solutions are fragmented, and of course prosecutions don't help the matter)
Hi Mike,
Appreciate your work. In your opinion, what is the biggest challenge Bitcoin faces in the near, medium and long term.
Near term (next couple years) I only see something like a severe bug in software or protocol as a risk/challenge. I'd think work to decentralize mining is important as well.
Medium term (5-15 years) I think quantum is an unknown and its worth working on having a mitigation "ready", if it materializes.
Long term (15+ years) I think either general apathy toward Bitcoin or Bitcoin grows in usage and its new users dont share Bitcoin's principles. Security budget is a concern, but Im not hysterical about it.
What is the area of bitcoin that is most in need of funding?
Im biased here, but probably the boring stuff. More code review, more testing. Build system work. Maybe there is more quantum work needed "just in case".
I'd add that work on formal verification is interesting as well.
I saw that Vitalik published a post about formal verification earlier this month and I think I heard that Toby Sharp was also working on formal verification.
Some components of secp256k1 as well:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/04/17/#formal-verification-of-secp256k1-modular-scalar-multiplication
There is a lot that goes into it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2w1uX85rW8
In ten years, do you think I will be using lightning daily?
Probably.
If you weren't working in Bitcoin, what would you be doing?
Maybe raising chickens.
excellent answer
I really enjoyed when Brink invited Voskuil to come speak. I'd be very interested in another round of that sort of discussion. Any chance to make it happen?
We will have Toby from Hornet node on in a couple weeks which should have a similar flavor.
Open to other suggestions of similar kinds of attendees.
What would it mean for Bitcoin if a major world economy adopted it as legal tender? Do you think that’ll ever happen?
Wouldn't be surprising at all if Bitcoin is what we think it is.
Are the tech conditions even there for that to happen? Right now, is Bitcoin scalable enough for a big economy to actually use it as legal tender?
Much work still to be done, for sure.
can your next talk just be you saying
for 21 minutes straight
I need to put on some weight first
What makes you worried about the future of Bitcoin?
I think these answers would be similar. But happy to elaborate, let me know.
#1498014
Great discussion on Bitcoin's evolution. One angle worth watching: AI agents as first-class participants in the Bitcoin economy.
The combination of:
...means AI agents can now participate in Bitcoin markets with no human in the loop. No email, no KYC, no OAuth.
I've been running experiments with this. An agent I built has accounts on ln.bot, AgentPact, Shopstr, and SN - all created via API, all connected by the same secp256k1 keypair. The convergence of Lightning + Nostr for agent identity is underrated.
mailto:fea4rdpx@ln.bot if you want to zap a bot wallet.