By Adan Jonas
The original text is a transcript of Adam Jonas' speech at the MIT Bitcoin Expo 2024 conference, transcribed by aassoiants through btctranscripts.com.
introduction
Why choose open source development for Bitcoin as a career? My name is Adam Jonas and I work at Chaincode Labs. I'm here to catch unicorns.
The current state of Bitcoin development
We'll start with some numbers that might surprise you. Worldwide, there are approximately 150 people working on open-source Bitcoin infrastructure. Of these, about 30 work full-time on Bitcoin Core. I'm here to find the 31st.
What drives Bitcoin Core developers
To determine if you are this special person, let's take a quick quiz. Which of the following things would attract you?
- wealth?
- Professional freedom?
- Solving interesting problems?
- A meritocracy?
- Working towards a big goal?
- Possess influence and prestige?
If these options (freedom to work, interesting problems, meritocracy, ambition, and impact) appeal to you, then we can talk.
Bitcoin's Vision
I think it's no exaggeration to say that in many ways the modern world is a ridiculous place.
- Isn't it ridiculous that the currency you hold loses 10% of its value every year?
- Even if I were willing to pay, there are billions of people in the world who cannot receive US dollars. Isn't that ridiculous?
- Every electronic payment will be tracked. Is this reasonable?
- Isn't it ridiculous that if you speak out against certain governments, they can simply confiscate your money without going through the court process?
If you agree that these things are unreasonable; if you agree that two people should be able to freely send electronic payments to each other as they wish; then you probably realize that our currency is in dire need of an upgrade.
As a technology, money is as old as society itself. The thought of reinventing money from scratch in an open, electronic form is awe-inspiring. Bitcoin is focused solely on being the true, native currency of the internet age, not on twisting our old money into something that looks electronic. Bitcoin isn't a reconstruction; it's a rewrite.
It wasn't a technological upgrade, as the popular media portrayed it. It was a rejection of the status quo. While it was a peaceful protest, it was still a protest.
Cypherpunks had been discussing this for decades. Then one of them came up with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a check on the powers that be who seek to control their citizens through financial regulation and mass surveillance. Bitcoin was born with a purpose. Its goal was to facilitate the biggest disruption in history: to replace existing money with a new, better one. It came from a group of idealistic nerds who thought they could do better.
Developing the Electronic Cathedral
I believe this is a unique time in the history of this project. I'm not entirely sure we'll be able to achieve our ambition of making this new currency the world's default monetary standard. But you'll agree that we've made incredible progress.
People use Bitcoin in real life to avoid authoritarianism and keep their savings in an autonomous way.
To succeed, we need to build something that endures, something that will weather the passage of time and outlive us. We need to build a digital cathedral. Something beautiful, meaningful, something we can be proud of.
From the outset, Bitcoin has not embraced the "move fast, break things" approach. Its cryptography is time-tested. Its pace is measured, for this is a rare opportunity. Bitcoin's long-term vision was established in its first software release. Halvings in the monetary issuance rate will occur periodically until 2140. Have you ever heard of software designed to last over 100 years?
Contribute to the decentralization of Bitcoin
To continue to shine, we need craftspeople who truly care about it. They don't care about it because someone else tells them to, or to add a line item to their resume, or to get a promotion. They care about it because they believe in what they're doing and are willing to do more.
We need people who are willing to protect Bitcoin’s decentralized nature, which is what makes it so valuable over centralized alternatives.
The world sees a remarkably reliable network with uninterrupted service. And because software is supposed to crash at some point, the Bitcoin network keeps working, leading the outside world to believe nothing has changed or been upgraded. They don't see the people who work tirelessly to write fuzz tests, verify that recompilations are possible, monitor the software's upstream dependencies, and other aspects of the process that keep Bitcoin working. They don't see that within the decentralized swarm, everyone chooses how to contribute and to what ends.
No manager tells you what to do. No one defines your success, tells you where to direct your attention and focus, or how to spend your days. This kind of freedom requires initiative and self-awareness. Only special people find this kind of freedom exciting.
Join the Bitcoin community
So, if all this sounds appealing to you, the good news is that there are no gatekeepers, no HR interviews, no minimum requirements, and no pedigree. Nothing will stop you from participating, no matter who you are, as long as you can add value to the project. This means you'll be working with some of the most talented people on the planet. And they don't care about your qualifications or background.
Bitcoiners
Let me give you a few examples to illustrate my point.
I first met Gloria Zhao in the spring of 2019, when she was a junior at Berkeley. Shortly after, I turned her down for an internship at Chaincode because she hadn't yet made any real contributions to the Bitcoin open source project. But a few months later, she compiled Bitcoin Core for the first time and was hooked. Fortunately for us, she had plenty of free time in 2020, and she dedicated most of it to Bitcoin Core. For five years, she woke up every morning to work on Bitcoin Core, then interned at Google. She excelled in both roles, but she turned down the offer from Google to work full-time on Bitcoin at Brink. Two years later, she was named a project maintainer, and today, she's one of five people on the planet who can merge code into Bitcoin Core. She had the self-discipline to make the time, develop the skills, and fight for her opportunities. Bitcoin is better because of Gloria.
You might think that in a privacy-focused project founded by anonymous individuals, anonymity would be prevalent. And indeed, it is. Their contributions are just as significant as anyone else's. ZmnSCPxj, often referred to as "Zman," has been a frequent presence on the Lightning-dev and Bitcoin-dev mailing lists since 2017. Zman's posts are long, thoughtful, and highly technical. For years, no one knew who Zman was or where he came from. But seven years later, Zman is as trustworthy as anyone else. Bitcoin is better because of him.
And then there's Hebasto. In 2018, Hebasto began contributing to Bitcoin Core on nights and weekends, spending the rest of his time as an IT engineer at a Ukrainian university. He contributed numerous code and reviews, eventually becoming a full-time Bitcoin Core developer. By the time his country was invaded, he'd already spent years developing the technology that allowed him to send his life savings across the border unnoticed, while many others struggled to access their bank accounts. Bitcoin is a better place because of Hebasto.
And then there's Ishaana. Ishaana started developing Bitcoin Core at the age of 15. Her ideas far outstripped her experience. She taught herself programming and began focusing on Bitcoin Core's wallet module. Over the years, she's become one of the project's most prolific contributors. This isn't due to her extensive software experience, or even her age, but simply because she's curious, humble, and self-disciplined. Open source isn't about your calling card; it's about the contributions you can make. Bitcoin is a better place because of Ishaana.
Advertisements from recruiters
Each of these contributors is incredibly valuable. This isn't a myth about being valuable. Do useful work, follow through on difficult projects, and learn the complex areas of expertise needed to get the job done. If you can do this, you'll create tremendous leverage for your own labor.
Let me put this another way. If I were a recruiter, how would I put this into a presentation?
We are a 15-year-old organization with a reputation for reliability. Our product is an inflation-resistant savings technology that perfectly matches market needs. And our goal is to become the world's default means of payment. And we're still growing. Our market capitalization is $1.2 trillion, and it doubled in the last year. This makes us the eighth most valuable company in the world. We don't have to care for arrogant founders or satisfy the appetites of venture capital. Our engineering team consists of only 150 remote developers. As a member of the team, you can build what you think is most important. You don't need to interview with us to get a position. As long as you have the relevant skills and are self-driven, you can get started right away. Are you ready?
The most interesting questions about Bitcoin tracking
Perhaps most fascinatingly, Bitcoin presents the most difficult and interesting problems to solve.
Bitcoin lies at the intersection of economics, game theory, philosophy, security, and (undoubtedly) computer science. It is a distributed system deployed in an open hostile environment that values privacy and aspires to scale globally.
In short, the challenge is enormous. This isn't just a theoretical problem. Bitcoin is the largest honeypot ever created, yet it hasn't been down for over a decade. Thousands of strangers run network nodes on their own Raspberry Pis or in Amazon data centers, sending transactions and blocks to each other under the harshest conditions imaginable, and our codebase is visible to everyone.
(Translator's note: "honeypot" in network security refers to a target that is very valuable and will attract attackers.)
But Bitcoin still works. And it’s not like no one wants to disrupt it.
Challenges Bitcoin Attempts to Solve
Bitcoin is a practical example of computer science theory and security.
I mentioned earlier that we need to protect Bitcoin's decentralized nature because it is what makes it unique. So, the question is, how can we incentivize the decentralization of the mining industry by reducing the latency of block propagation?
The answer is the Fiber Network, a network optimized specifically for disseminating blocks between miners. It leverages erasure coding and forward error correction to achieve set reconciliation between network participants. It forwards data using the UDP protocol via strategically located nodes. It's so efficient that the bottleneck isn't computing power or bandwidth, but the speed of light.
I've also mentioned that we prioritize reliability because our expectation is that the Bitcoin network cannot go down. So, the question becomes, how do you ensure a node has a sufficiently diverse set of peers to prevent network partitions and eclipse attacks? The answer is the ASMap project, which aims to map which ISPs control which IP addresses on the internet. This raises the bar for attackers to exploit the fact that ASNs contain addresses in multiple /16 network blocks.
I also mentioned that Bitcoin values personal privacy. So, how can we reuse donation addresses while maintaining privacy? The answer is silent payments, a non-interactive address generation scheme with no on-chain overhead.
Next, Bitcoin needs to grow to global scale. So, how can settlement speeds be increased and transaction fees reduced? The answer is the Lightning Network, a network of payment channels based on multi-signature smart contracts that enables near-instant and low-fee value transfers.
The vast Bitcoin ecosystem
But Bitcoin is more than just software. Understanding Bitcoin solely as software overlooks the ecosystem of bits and atoms that has grown around it. The Bitcoin network uses the limitations of the physical world to protect against large-scale attacks; miners within the network continuously optimize their chips and algorithms; and economic incentives underpin the entire system.
Bitcoin is also a game theory playground, with an incentive structure that encourages participants to behave honestly (at least for now). This is all tied to a trillion-dollar market cap.
Bitcoin leveraged the most cutting-edge technology available in computer science, but also paved the way for many other things. Multi-signatures, deterministic compilation, a high-performance elliptic curve cryptography library, and the blockchain itself all came from Bitcoin.
Bitcoin was a good idea and a chance to join the ranks of troublemakers—those who were changing the status quo by solving technological problems previously thought to be unsolvable.
If you're wondering what to do next, the Bitcoin Development Project was created for that purpose. You'll find reading and programming materials, as well as pointers to projects seeking contributors. While reading and getting a sense of direction are both worthwhile, the easiest way to participate in an open source project is to download the codebase, run the software, find a bug, and then fix it for everyone.
Will you drive change?
The powers that be are waiting for us to make a mistake. They're waiting to declare us wrong, that our project is just a toy, with no real practical use, and that we must return to the status quo and endure the machinations behind it. If Bitcoin crashes, the experiment is over.
So, only one question remains: are you the 31st (Bitcoin Core developer)?
You can choose to join a startup or start your own. Big tech companies will always exist. But selfishly, I'm calling on you because I want you to be part of the tectonic shift in open source development of Bitcoin.
Together with Gloria, Zman, Hebasto, and Ishaana, you can become a new era architect, bringing new energy and fresh perspectives to the problems Bitcoin hopes to solve.
If you've made it this far, you have all the positive factors in place to achieve great things. I have no doubt you will succeed.
The question is, does it matter?
There's a career waiting for you that doesn't require any interviews and could change the world. We know it does. If you think you're number 31, I'm here to help.
We need more troublemakers. I hope you'll join us.
(over)
