Bitcoin is still the world’s biggest crypto network. However, according to James O’Beirne – one of the asset’s top developers – the blockchain behind BTC could wind up faltering in the coming weeks unless people decide to step up and donate enough money that the remaining developers can get paid for what they do.
Bitcoin Developers Need More Funds to Stay Afloat
Who would have known that all the developers and other individuals working hard to bring bitcoin to fruition rely primarily on donations to stay afloat? Their jobs involve maintaining and writing additional code, a very complicated task. What they do is extremely important for the upkeep of the network. However, they primarily rely on grants and on good-naturedness from donors to maintain their livings and their jobs.
Clearly, this can be difficult to do as not everyone has the money to ensure the future of the bitcoin blockchain, and among those that do, there will only be a handful who choose to deliver their funds to such an endeavor. If the present developers do not get the funds they need, they’ll likely start looking for other jobs, which means bitcoin may fall behind.
On Twitter, O’Beirne offered the following message:
It’d be nice to see more bitcoin businesses step up. This could get bad.
Despite his attitude of gloom and doom, other industry heads – such as Steven Lee, who leads a division of Jack Dorsey’s Block firm – believes that once crypto prices shoot up again, the money O’Beirne is looking for should pile in like it has in previous years. He stated:
You [need] to recognize that we’re in the middle of a bear market. Some companies and funders that were doing a really nice job of funding developers have had to reduce that due to financial pressures and the bear market.
Gloria Zhao helps maintain Bitcoin Core, one of the most popular and powerful bitcoin-related forms of software. She stated:
Every software project requires maintenance. Up to 70 percent of software project activity is maintenance work, and I think… it’s more than that in Bitcoin Core… [Most] of changes are just, like, bug fixes, and then a very small minority are maybe something like Taproot or something like Package Relay where you’re trying to make a protocol change.
The Asset Will Never Collapse
While the world’s number one digital asset has seen a rough year in 2022, Lee is confident the network will always have enough funds to ensure its position on the present crypto ladder, and he doesn’t think BTC will ever falter. He said:
Even in the worst-case scenario, there [are] still several organizations that fund bitcoin development. As far as I know, they’re not in a situation where the budgets can disappear, and that includes Spiral and [it] includes Chaincode Labs and Brink.
