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> Out of the 6 maintainers with commit access on GitHub, only a single developer is associated with Blockstream. Please don't be so naive. Greg Maxwell gave u

> Out of the 6 maintainers with commit access on GitHub, only a single developer is associated with Blockstream. Please don't be so naive. Greg Maxwell gave up his commit access for "optics" - to make BlockStream look better. Meanwhile, Wladimir van der Laan, the project maintainer, says he won't accept any code contributions which are "controversial". That is, he wants 100% consensus for larger blocks. Yet he blindly accepts anything from Blockstream employees such as RBF and segregated witness fee discounts which are controversial. Also, Blockstream burnt through $10m+ in 12 months, how much of that went into paying consultants and "supporters" such as Peter Todd, Luke-Jr, and even Bram Cohen who laughed at Bitcoin until suddenly in 2015 he loved everything Blockstream was doing? Finally, investors? Investors will say and do anything if it helps them make money!

bachback 11y ago
Interesting. Do you have details on the 10M$ spend? Unfortunately I have to agree - Blockstream is a mess. Adam Back and Austin Hill have 0 commits to the project and established them as power brokers.
nullc 11y ago
> Greg Maxwell gave up his commit access for "optics" - to make BlockStream look better. My reduction in involvement was not related to blockstream and wasn't discussed in the company in advance. I can't personally take the toxic environment created by people like you and it has been adversely impacting my health. Unfortunately, even when I have nothing at all to do with Bitcoin for long spans of time people continued attacking and threatening me and my family. > Blockstream burnt through $10m+ in 12 months No we didn't. We have most of our seed money funds available after two years of operation. Blockstream has never paid Peter Todd or Bram Cohen (but sure, Luke-jr has been a contractor, a publicly known fact all along). Bram Cohen followed the same path as many other technical experts-- he considered it implausible, and then after understanding it better considered it implausible but super interesting. There is no sin in thinking that Bitcoin is a long shot: it's a fantastic, exciting, potentially world changing long shot. > from Blockstream such as RBF No one at Blockstream had anything to do with opt-in RBF. But the functionality-- user selectable replacement for unconfirmed transactions, something that the original releases of Bitcoin had until it was disabled for DOS reasons-- was discussed for months without a _single_ person speaking out in opposition while it was proposed. Only after it it was merged and slated for release did a number of throw away accounts begin a misinformation campaign about it (conveniently arguing that it was a reason to switch to "Bitcoin Classic"). Subsequently, many others in the industry like Stephen Pair at Bitpay have spoken up in support of it. > segregated witness fee discounts which are controversial I'm not aware of any controversy there. There appears to be universal agreement in the technical community that UTXO bloat is one of the larger problems the system has which would be exacerbated by bigger blocksizes. At scaling Bitcoin Montreal there was widespread agreement that new costing mechanisms were needed to make fees better reflect UTXO carrying costs. The way segwitness costing works achieves that; by making removing UTXO entries more equal in cost to creating them.
- notlukejr 11y ago
  Your President, Adam Back, said on Reddit that half of the initial seed money (which was $21m) had been spent, just after the announcement of your series A ($55m). Who to believe? Or was he speaking as an "individual" rather than an employee of Blockstream? Are we to believe that multiple employees of Blockstream fly to Hong Kong, stay in hotels, but are there acting in an individual capacity? https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/46s54r/why_has_blockstream_omitted_putting_their/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/46s54r/why_has_blockst...
  - petertodd 11y ago
    > Your President, Adam Back, said on Reddit that half of the initial seed money (which was $21m) had been spent, just after the announcement of your series A ($55m). Who to believe? Source?

bachback 11y ago

Interesting. Do you have details on the 10M$ spend? Unfortunately I have to agree - Blockstream is a mess. Adam Back and Austin Hill have 0 commits to the project and established them as power brokers.

nullc 11y ago

> Greg Maxwell gave up his commit access for "optics" - to make BlockStream look better. My reduction in involvement was not related to blockstream and wasn't discussed in the company in advance. I can't personally take the toxic environment created by people like you and it has been adversely impacting my health. Unfortunately, even when I have nothing at all to do with Bitcoin for long spans of time people continued attacking and threatening me and my family. > Blockstream burnt through $10m+ in 12 months No we didn't. We have most of our seed money funds available after two years of operation. Blockstream has never paid Peter Todd or Bram Cohen (but sure, Luke-jr has been a contractor, a publicly known fact all along). Bram Cohen followed the same path as many other technical experts-- he considered it implausible, and then after understanding it better considered it implausible but super interesting. There is no sin in thinking that Bitcoin is a long shot: it's a fantastic, exciting, potentially world changing long shot. > from Blockstream such as RBF No one at Blockstream had anything to do with opt-in RBF. But the functionality-- user selectable replacement for unconfirmed transactions, something that the original releases of Bitcoin had until it was disabled for DOS reasons-- was discussed for months without a _single_ person speaking out in opposition while it was proposed. Only after it it was merged and slated for release did a number of throw away accounts begin a misinformation campaign about it (conveniently arguing that it was a reason to switch to "Bitcoin Classic"). Subsequently, many others in the industry like Stephen Pair at Bitpay have spoken up in support of it. > segregated witness fee discounts which are controversial I'm not aware of any controversy there. There appears to be universal agreement in the technical community that UTXO bloat is one of the larger problems the system has which would be exacerbated by bigger blocksizes. At scaling Bitcoin Montreal there was widespread agreement that new costing mechanisms were needed to make fees better reflect UTXO carrying costs. The way segwitness costing works achieves that; by making removing UTXO entries more equal in cost to creating them.

notlukejr 11y ago
Your President, Adam Back, said on Reddit that half of the initial seed money (which was $21m) had been spent, just after the announcement of your series A ($55m). Who to believe? Or was he speaking as an "individual" rather than an employee of Blockstream? Are we to believe that multiple employees of Blockstream fly to Hong Kong, stay in hotels, but are there acting in an individual capacity? https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/46s54r/why_has_blockstream_omitted_putting_their/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/46s54r/why_has_blockst...
- petertodd 11y ago
  > Your President, Adam Back, said on Reddit that half of the initial seed money (which was $21m) had been spent, just after the announcement of your series A ($55m). Who to believe? Source?