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BCAP 🔎 BSC #82

Description

@yashrajd

Bitcoin Security Consortium was announced recently, through which large fiat financial institutions announced "support(ing) the long-term security and resilience of the Bitcoin network" through funding of protocol developers. In their own words, the current focus is post-quantum security.

The overall question is whether BSC/constituents can exercise sufficient & lasting influence to successfully push contentious consensus changes in the future.

A sub-question might be: does the expansion of influence of BSC/constituents into protocol development funding tip the scale?

Related: whether/what updates to BCAP are warranted? (see P.S and P.P.S)

Brief rationale

  • Firstly, the core ethos of many of BSC constituents runs directly counter to that of bitcoin (p2p transmission and disintermediation of value transfer), which was a self-professed reaction to the financialisation of money and the economy by a host of intermediaries. The ~only shared interest emerges when bitcoin is viewed as a "financial asset". 80 IQ 🤝 140 IQ

  • These entities collectively (and individually in some cases) manage/intermediate Trillions $ in fiat financial system, (nominally) own millions of bitcoins, and exert unprecedented formal and informal influence on virtually every bitcoin stakeholder (except protocol developers, until now) including the currently undescribed government stakeholder (analyze scenario of US government having a significant SBR #59/Add governments as a new stakeholder category #79).

Thus, BSC deserves detailed scrutiny through the lens of BCAP.

Potential future development/scenario

A consensus change introducing certain PQ cryptographic primitives/schemes endorsed by authorities and regulators but disfavoured by the broader non-institutional community.

Please share queries, objections, insights or anything else.

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P.S

BCAP already mentions a single entity belonging to multiple stakeholder groups, but doesn't ponder over it in (enough) detail:

Entities may belong to multiple stakeholder groups, leading them to exercise various powers and navigate a mix of potentially competing incentives.

https://github.com/bitcoin-cap/bcap#what-maintains-bitcoin-consensus

While the fact is hardly surprising (albeit astute): A perfect example is BCAP's own Lyn Alden ( media influencer (thought leader, financial advisor), a VC funding application developers, and HODLer herself)...the entry and presence of the world's largest asset managers and top shareholders in the world's (and maybe bitcoin's) largest/most-influential companies warrants a deeper look.

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P.P.S - another concept to consider: meta-stakeholder, in order to formalise the stakholder-on-stakeholder influence above a given size. Would also apply to governments #79

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