1/ Going to quickly outline for everyone why this is extremely concerning if you care (at all) about Bitcoin's ecosystem.
This thread is a must-read.
2/ @Blockstream, founded by @adam3us is the primary firm responsible for Bitcoin and LN's development (picture here proves the LN statement; next tweet proves the BTC dev. statement)
veriphi.io/en/blog/a-brie…
3/ Attached to this tweet are screens from Mosaic Ventures' (investor) website
"Out of 200ish committers in total, just a small number...working quasi-independently, are responsibnle for the *vast majority of code commits*."
mosaicventures.com/patterns/our-i… [published 2014]
4/ Another notable excerpt here where it is admitted by Mosaic that, "A handful of 'core devs' deliberate the merits of various changes to the protocol."
That core group = @Blockstream , so it figures we should be attuned to what it is they're actually doing, right @adam3us?
5/ What your boy @APompliano forgot to tell you above is that the $210M @Blockstream included funds from both @bitfinex and @Tether_to (via iFinex), and was purposed to help them expand their "mining" activities.
6/ To explain this problem succinctly, let's look at Taproot (BIP370) for Bitcoin.
This was an "upgrade" for Bitcoin based on an idea + code authored mainly by Peter Wiulle
lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitc…
7/ After Wiulle, a *Blockstream* employee at the time (non-disputed), proposed this "upgrade" to the protocol, the idea was accepted fully by other members of Core (i.e., Blockstream.).
Recently, Blockstream put the acceptance of Taproot to a "vote".
8/ Bitcoin changes difficulties every epoch. Each epoch is supposed to take 2 weeks (2016 blocks; 10 mins per block target).
On May 1st, miner "voting" on Taproot started.
In order to pass, >90% of blocks within a given epoch must signal 'yay'
9/ This process is supposedly governed by 'BIP 9', which you can find here - github.com/bitcoin/bips/b…
Guess who authored that BIP? Yes - Blockstream (completely).
So the rules governing the approval of this proposal created by Blockstream were created by Blockstream too. Hmm.
10/ This $210M Series B fundraise is not @Blockstream's first foray into mining.
In Sept. 2019, @Blockstream has boasted its "enterprise-class mining facilities, management, and support for the colocation of Bitcoin mining equipment."
They also admit, "we mine ourselves too!"
11/ To get a better idea of the vast $BTC mining resources @Blockstream held, its worth checking out this Forbes article penned by Kyle Torpey (2019) - forbes.com/sites/ktorpey/…
Torpey himself wrote, "The size of Blockstream's mining facilities cannot be overstated."
12/ He wasn't lying when he said that.
To get a better sense of this magnitude, let's quantify the MW capacity they boast (300MW). That's approx. 0.3 GW.
Bay City, Texas' power plant has a 400MW capacity
13/ Juxtaposing the info above w estimated resource consumption of the Antminer S19j Pro, we know @Blockstream had the capacity to house 98,360 of those units back in 2019 (1MW = 1 million watts); 300mill. / 3050 watts = 98.3k units
14/ Considering the estimated hashrate of 100 TH/s (stock), @Blockstream had/has the ablity to leverage >10 Eh/s (the network total is 128 at this very moment).
15/ Also that article, Torpey himself wrote, "The size of Blockstream's mining facilities cannot be overstated" and that Blockstream CSO, Samson Mow (@Excellion) vouched @Blockstream could leverage >6 EH/s if necessary (as in, they already had that much in tow).
16/ On June 27th, 2021 - the estimated hashrate for the BTC network was 57 Eh/s (source - 'Bitcoin Visuals')
Which means if @Blockstream didn't scale *at all* over the last 2 years, they would've been able to account for >10% of the network's hashrate.
17/ The above is worth mentioning since Taproot didn't gain "confirmation" until a week or two prior
coindesk.com/locked-in-bitc…
18/ Another major excerpt from that Torpey piece worth mentioning are the names of @Blockstream's only mining clients at the time.
Those entities were none other than 'Fidelity Center for Applied Technology' and 'Reid Hoffman'; we're going to take a closer look at the latter.
19/ Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn back in 2003 and is a partner at VC firm, 'Greylock Partners'.
The reason why this is relevant is because Reid Hoffman is also a key investor in Blockstream and he's on the company Board of Directors.
sec.gov/Archives/edgar…
20/ These facts make it clear that @Blockstream is purposefully mischaracterizing Reid Hoffman as a "customer" of theirs, when - in fact, he's one of @Blockstream's owners (would Bezos ever be considered a customer of Amazon?)
21/ Check out this press release on @Blockstream's site released in January 2021 this year).
They refer to Hoffman as "LinkedIN founder Reid Hoffman"
P.S. - what's this "top secret mining service" about they mention?
blockstream.com/2021/01/27/en-…
22/ This entire thread was created to make readers question how "centralized" and tightly controlled Bitcoin Core development & decision making is.
All that mining info above was to bang home the point that the Taproot voting process was nowhere near objective.
23/ Essentially we have a situation where
- Blockstream came up with an idea
- Blockstream put it to a vote using rules created by Blockstream
- Blockstream possesses the resources to account for a major percentage of said vote (which they did participate in)
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