{"id":25917,"date":"2015-09-14T22:36:21","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T22:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe66d0012697"},"modified":"2025-01-28T20:23:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T20:23:35","slug":"adam-back-risks-benevolent-dictatorship-bitcoin-1442270181","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/adam-back-risks-benevolent-dictatorship-bitcoin-1442270181","title":{"rendered":"Adam Back on the Risks of Benevolent Dictatorship in Bitcoin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The idea of a benevolent dictator<\/a> for Bitcoin has become a topic of conversation throughout the community lately due to Mike Hearn<\/a>\u2019s role as the final authority for changes in Bitcoin XT<\/a>. Although it should be made clear that Hearn is able to dictate only policy for that particular implementation of the Bitcoin protocol, some individuals are turned off by the idea of having a single point of failure in the development process.<\/p>\n

Blockstream<\/a> co-founder and President Adam Back<\/a> is one such person, and he shared some of his views on the subject during a recent interview with Epicenter Bitcoin<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Putting the Entire Bitcoin Economy on One Man\u2019s Shoulders<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back described a variety of issues with a benevolent dictatorship governance model for Bitcoin during the interview, but his main point was that having a single person with a large amount of power in the development process could lead to problems associated with moral hazard.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the issue of the immense amount of pressure facing any individual who decides to take on the role of benevolent dictator. Back described this dynamic during his appearance on Epicenter Bitcoin<\/em>:<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think the danger with Bitcoin is that there\u2019s a lot of other people\u2019s money at stake, right? There\u2019s a $4 billion economy, and as we go into the future \u2014 if Bitcoin sees adoption in certain segments for international settlements or as acompetitor to gold<\/a> or something \u2014 that could turn into a $4 trillion economy. If you turn around and think for a few minutes about would you personally like to be the final arbiter, I think you\u2019ll find the answer would be no because you would be subject to immense amounts of international pressure, potentially blackmail, people bugging your equipment, [people] trying to sabotage [you .] Even governments and central banks employing Nobel Laureate economists struggle to avoid moral hazard.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Promoting a Diverse Development Process<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back then discussed some of the other risks associated with having a single person making final decisions on important development matters in Bitcoin. He noted the importance of having a diverse development process to avoid those kinds of issues:<\/p>\n

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\u201cAnother kind of risk is that a particular individual may have a hidden agenda or be working for, you know, a criminal organization or a foreign government with a conflict of interest or something. If there\u2019s a peer-review process where a group of diverse people have to review changes and approve [them] \u2014 that\u2019s the best we know how to do in terms of avoiding those kinds of influences creeping in.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Although many people have demonized the relatively slow development process that has plagued Bitcoin Core<\/a> for the past few years, the reality is that there may not be better options that don\u2019t introduce new, unforeseen complications.<\/p>\n

Gavin Andresen on Being the Benevolent Dictator of Bitcoin<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bitcoin XT Developer and Bitcoin Foundation<\/a> Chief Scientist Gavin Andresen<\/a> was interviewed in an episode of Epicenter Bitcoin<\/em> released one week prior to Adam Back\u2019s appearance, and he also shared his thoughts on the pressure related to being a benevolent dictator for Bitcoin:<\/p>\n

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\u201cHaving been in the position of lead maintainer and knowing that this whole multi-billion dollar industry kinda-sorta rests on your shoulders because you\u2019re in charge of the code that everybody is running \u2014 that\u2019s a horrible place to be. It\u2019s insane pressure to make the right decision, which is part of the reason why I think we need to evolve beyond that \u2014 so that no one person or group of people feels like the whole weight of the system rests of their decisions, so there is more room to make decisions, to innovate and even make mistakes.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Andresen\u2019s view<\/a> is that a benevolent dictator could allow the development community to avoid delays in the deployment of bug fixes and new features, although he\u2019d also like to see a variety of implementations of the Bitcoin protocol:<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe impact of those mistakes will be smaller if you have a more diverse system where maybe not everybody is running the same version of the code on the network. There are lots of different versions of the code if any one breaks; it\u2019s not that big of a deal because the whole system doesn\u2019t break. Diversity really does bring more robustness in this case.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For now, Bitcoin Core is still the main implementation of the protocol used by the vast majority of users. Wladimir J. van der Laan<\/a> is technically the lead maintainer of Bitcoin Core, but he is not willing to act as benevolent dictator at this time. Unless the mining industry changes their minds and begins to support Bitcoin XT, it appears that there won\u2019t be any benevolent dictators of Bitcoin in the near future.<\/p>\n

Photo World Economic Forum<\/a> \/ Flickr (CC)<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The idea of a benevolent dictator for Bitcoin has become a topic of conversation throughout the community lately due to Mike Hearn\u2019s role as the final authority for changes in Bitcoin XT. Although it should be made clear that Hearn is able to dictate only policy for that particular implementation of the Bitcoin protocol, some individuals are turned off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3445,"featured_media":25918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[118,3583,1038,3493,3587,3575,2362,1739],"class_list":{"0":"post-25917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-adam-back","9":"tag-bitcoin-xt","10":"tag-core","11":"tag-epicenter","12":"tag-gavin-andersen","13":"tag-mike-hearn","14":"tag-people","15":"tag-podcasts"},"author_data":{"id":3445,"name":"Kyle Torpey","nicename":"kyle-torpey","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/kyle-torpey-promo-image-96x96.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/adam-back-on-the-risks-of-benevolent-dictatorship-in-bitcoin.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3445"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}