Who Controls Bitcoin Core?

The question of who controls the ability to merge code changes into Bitcoin Core’s GitHub repository tends to come up on a recurring basis. This has been cited as a “central point of control” of the Bitcoin protocol by various parties over the years, but I argue that the question itself is a red herring that stems from an authoritarian perspective—this model does not apply to Bitcoin. It’s certainly not obvious to a layman as to why that is the case, thus the goal of this article is to explain how Bitcoin Core operates and, at a higher level, how the Bitcoin protocol itself evolves.

Bitcoin Core is a focal point for development of the Bitcoin protocol rather than a point of command and control. If it ceased to exist for any reason, a new focal point would emerge—the technical communications platform upon which it’s based (currently the GitHub repository) is a matter of convenience rather than one of definition / project integrity. In fact, we have already seen Bitcoin’s focal point for development change platforms and even names!

In early 2009 the source code for the Bitcoin project was simply a.rar file hosted on SourceForge. Early developers would actually exchange code patches with Satoshi via email. While there are a handful of GitHub “maintainer” accounts at the organization level that have the ability to merge code into the master branch, this is more of a janitorial function than a position of power.

If anyone could merge into master it would very quickly turn into a “too many cooks in the kitchen” scenario. Bitcoin Core follows principles of least privilege that any power bestowed to individuals is easily subverted if it is abused.

Source: medium.com