Joseph Poon, Lightning Network developer, has publicly stated today that Bitcoin Core has “a hole-and-corner channel where they organize their PR too trolling campaigns.” He farther stated that “many people convey talked close it (more than five people) too it’s alluded to it inward diverse places which are publicly accessible since it’s basically where a lot of decisions closed to PR happens.”
The statement was publicly made afterwards some Blockstream employees defendant Poon of bypassing the evolution procedure yesteryear going to the press. Poon said that he is “extremely upset that they are attacking me for going to the press when they participate inward far to a greater extent than underhanded tactics, too all of Core knows sum good what they’re doing if non actively contributing.” We asked Poon to clarify, including naming the trolls too who organizes the trolling, but he said he’d “rather non escalate this, beyond my comment. I experience similar it wouldn’t hold upwardly helpful.”
It forthwith seems clear that a schism has developed betwixt Blockstream employees too Lightning Network developers next a proposal to increment on-chain capacity field facilitating minute layer implementations similar the Lightning Network. Tensions convey farther considerably increased today next a statement by Gregory Maxwell, Blockstream’s CTO, where he called a mining optimization – AsicsBoost – every bit an gear upwardly on on bitcoin. Speculations regarding organized trollings yesteryear Blockstream specifically convey been made for quite some time, specially afterwards Alex Bergeron, ameliorate known on reddit every bit brg444, who constantly argued inward favor of Blockstream inward a somewhat trolling manner, was genuinely hired yesteryear Blockstream. However, it is the commencement fourth dimension somebody prominent too well-known has publicly stated Bitcoin Core is running trolling campaigns inward hole-and-corner channels which may explicate some of the toxicity coming out of some parts of bitcoin’s community.
A toxicity that may extend further, creating a really unwelcoming environment, including for developers, amongst some leaving. Like, for example, Taylor Gerring, a respected ethereum developer, who said he “ceased developing for Bitcoin afterwards miserable dev mailing listing interactions [in 2013].” Featured ikon from Shutterstock.