“While there are a handful of GitHib ‘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.”īut he also is fond of the phrase: “don’t trust, verify.” So, let’s do just that. Jameson Lopp, CTO of Bitcoin self-custody solution provider Casa, has said the maintainer’s role is not much of a key man risk. To stop the codebase being edited ad infinitum by anyone, no changes are actually made unless a maintainer signs off on one with their PGP key. Since Bitcoin’s codebase is stored publicly on GitHub, anyone can propose a change to the Bitcoin codebase. These keys are used to sign, encrypt and decrypt texts, emails, files, and other forms of communications or information. Image: ShutterstockĮvery Bitcoin maintainer has access to a PGP key, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy. PGP keys protect Bitcoin from being updated by just anyone.
#Bitcoin core github update
To update the Bitcoin codebase, Bitcoin’s team of maintainers will review code proposed by one of Bitcoin’s thousands of developers, and, if it’s good enough, that code will get approved. Gavin Anderson, founder of The Bitcoin Foundation, reportedly elected Van der Laan as Bitcoin’s lead maintainer-the person chiefly responsible for uploading changes to Bitcoin Core. Instead, the privilege is extended on an ad hoc basis by existing maintainers when someone demonstrates the right qualifications to get a seat at the table. Image: Shutterstockīitcoin is an open-source project, so maintainers don’t get formally appointed. Only a select few become Bitcoin maintainers. These are: Wladimir van der Laan, Jonas Schnelli, Marco Falke, Samuel Dobson, Michael Ford and Pieter Wuille. While its official website doesn’t specify exactly who has this responsibility, according to sleuths on, just six people have commit access. Who are Bitcoin’s maintainers?įirst, we need to understand how the system works.īitcoin Core’s maintainers are the only people who can make material changes to Bitcoin’s code in the GitHub repository. What we found is that there are many areas of possible attack but that the system is fairly robust in handling them. We spoke to Bitcoin experts and developers to understand how the system works, and whether an attack could be carried out. We decided to run this thought experiment, to push it to its limits and analyze if there is a potential weakness here. What would happen if someone managed to infiltrate this code, and inserted a bug into the Bitcoin network itself? Could a government make a concerted effort to shut the whole system down? Many have tried to ban Bitcoin. While Bitcoin’s network is decentralized, this is arguably the most centralized element-and potentially its biggest weakness.
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