While these keys are tied to known identities, it’s still not safe to assume that it will always be the case - a key could be compromised and we wouldn’t know unless the original key owner notified the other maintainers. Rather than base the integrity of the code off of GitHub accounts, Bitcoin Core has a continuous integration system that performs checks of trusted PGP keys that must sign every merge commit. But it’s unlikely that a GitHub attacker would also be able to compromise the PGP key of a Bitcoin Core maintainer. Any number of GitHub employees could use their administrative privileges to inject code into the repository without consent from the maintainers. Bitcoin Core follows principles of least privilege that any power bestowed to individuals is easily subverted if it is abused.įrom an adversarial perspective, GitHub can not be trusted. If anyone could merge into master it would very quickly turn into a “too many cooks in the kitchen” scenario. 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.
The History of Bitcoin Coreīitcoin Core is a focal point for development of the Bitcoin protocol rather than a point of command and control. 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. 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. 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.
Who Controls Bitcoin Core? By Jameson Lopp Posted December 15, 2018
0 kommentar(er)
