Core Developer Calls Andresen’s Acts the ‘Final Straw’

Bitcoin developer Wladimir J. van der Laan has revealed his opinion about the revocation of Gavin Andresen’s commit access to the Bitcoin protocol. In a blog post, that describes his “personal reflection of recent events” he explains that his writing is not an official statement from Bitcoin Core. However, the developer says that when asked about reinstating Andresen’s maintaining privileges he and others say “no” and there is just no point.

“I wasn’t sure, and am still not sure how Gavin is involved in this. It is no longer likely that he was hacked, but at the very least he is confused. When we saw the blog post convinced he found Satoshi, the prudent thing to do was to revoke his ownership of the ‘bitcoin’ organization on github, under which the Bitcoin Core repository currently lies, immediately.”  —- Wladimir J. van der Laan, Laanwj’s blog

With the recent events of the Satoshi Nakamoto hoax played out by Craig Wright many have believed that the longtime chief scientist of Bitcoin Gavin Andresen had been compromised. While others feel he may have just been deceived, it has definitely caused some in the community to show a lack of trust for the developer. On May 2nd, Bitcoin developer Peter Todd announced that Andresen’s commit access to the code was revoked saying, “FYI, Gavin Andresen’s commit access just got removed – Core team members are concerned that he may have been hacked.” Despite the discovery hours later that Wright’s claims were fabricated, and Andresen testifying at Consensus that he was not hacked, the group has not reinstated the developers access. Two days later Andresen said that maybe his blog post of identifying Wright as Satoshi may not have been the best idea.

Wladimir J. van der Laan says there was a lot of issues prior to this event that had caused some to believe Andresen wasn’t committed to the project. So the developer calls the Satoshi incident the “final straw.” Wladimir explains that Andresen was “seen as a liability”  in the eyes of members working on the network. Other concerns focused on was the “principle of least privilege” philosophy whereas in the computer security sector members should “only have access to the resources they need for the purposes that are essential to the user’s job.” To individual members of Core, the matter of contention is that Andresen has been inactive for over a year, and Wladimir claims before this year he was hardly active for a long time.

Since the revocation of Andresen’s commit access individuals and community organizations have complained to Core about what has been done. In reply to Peter Todd’s statement about Gavin’s access removal the Bitcoin Foundation’s Bruce Fenton says via Twitter, “Peter Todd, He was not hacked, possibly victim of a hoax, but not hacked… will access be reinstated? “ The Mining group Slush Pool also speaks out about the incident saying, “Peter Todd, Who decided to remove Gavin’s key *permanently*? I want to see community consensus. Bitcoin is not yours.” Along with a slew of others complaining about the removal of Gavin’s access CEO of Shapeshift Erik Voorhees is very disappointed in the decision. Voorhees details his opinions saying:

“Really disappointed to see Gavin Andresen’s commit access removed.  Deceptively done; not emblematic of Bitcoin’s ideals.—- It was pulled under pretense of hack. Hack hadn’t occurred. Should’ve been reinstated, period.” —- Erik Voorhees, Shapeshift 

It seems just like the block size debate many within the Bitcoin community don’t see eye to eye with each other concerning Gavin Andresen’s role in the Craig Wright fiasco. On the subreddit r/bitcoin, a commenter Bob Alison writes, “Decentralization is terrifying to many people when they fully appreciate its most counterintuitive idea: nobody is in charge. Wladimir and Gavin are just two voices, and bitcoin/bitcoin is just one software distribution mechanism of many.” Whatever the case may be Andersen’s role with working with the Bitcoin code doesn’t look so promising.

Source: Laanwj’s blog