Roles

This guide categorises participants into the following roles:

  • Independent technical experts
    • Researchers – Academic interest in Bitcoin related areas, and detailed high-level research, worst case analysis, etc.
    • Protocol Developers – People who implement/review consensus logic.
    • Power Users – People who have a practical interest in Bitcoin, and a high-level of willingness to experiment with new things in the Bitcoin space.
    • Maintainers – People who maintain and release node software such as Bitcoin Core.
  • Bitcoin businesses
    • Industry – People who build software and services that take advantage of and rely on Bitcoin. The technical/programmer side of Bitcoin businesses.
    • Entrepreneurs – The risk-seeking side of Bitcoin businesses.
    • Miners – People who participate in block-building and transaction ordering (particularly pool maintainers, hashrate controllers).
  • Oversight
    • Investors – People who hold Bitcoin as a store of value, invest in Bitcoin businesses, etc.
    • Auditors – People who audit Bitcoin’s supply and ownership (the accounting/financial side; see “Protocol Developers” for the coding side).

These roles are not in any way exclusive; for example many Protocol Developers will also be Researchers or part of Industry, many Miners will also be Entrepreneurs to some degree, and many people who have another role will also be Investors.

Focus Summary

This guide expects each role will be focussed on particular phases, rather than participating in a fork’s development equally at every phase.

Independent Technical Experts

For the independent technical expert roles, this is expected to look like:

  • Researchers: Primarily the R&D phase, but also monitoring the Power User and Industry phases, and supporting Investors in their evaluation.

  • Protocol Developers: Significant work in both developing a usable prototype in the Power User phase, and producing a high quality final implementation in the Finalization phase. Also watching of the R&D phase to see what’s worth spending time on, as well as monitoring the Industry phase in case updates to the prototype implementation are needed, and supporting Investors in their evaluation.

  • Power Users: Mostly focussed on the Power User phase, but also monitoring any interesting advances during the Industry phase, and supporting Investors in their evaluation.

  • Maintainers: Mostly focussed on reviewing the high quality final implementation produced in the Finalization phase, and to a lesser extent ensuring Activation also runs smoothly. May also check over the prototype developed for Power Users, particularly as that may find and fix problems early.

Bitcoin Businesses

For the Bitcoin business roles, it is expected to look like:

  • Industry: Unsurprisingly, focussed on the Industry phase, and on reporting the findings from that phase during the Investor phase.

  • Entrepreneurs: This guide focusses on minimising the risks of consensus changes, so has few suggestions on how to benefit from embracing risk. One approach that may make sense is in providing funding for independent technical researchers in the R&D, Power User and Industry phases to fully explore the potential of proposed changes. Historically, many Bitcoin businesses have been slow to adopt new consensus features, so early access to expertise in this manner in regards to new features may be able to be leveraged into a time to market advantage as well.

  • Miners: This guide only recommends miners focus on proposals at two stages, during the Investor review phase, to ensure that any changes that may be problematic to their business are caught before being finalised, and then during the Activation phase, in order to expedite deployment of a change.

Oversight

Finally, for the oversight roles, this is expected to look like:

  • Investors: This guide assumes that the soft fork process should be optimised for investors, minimising the work they have to do, but maximising the influence they can exert. Hence, they are focussed on the single Investor phase that acts as the key gateway for establishing social consensus.

  • Auditors: The accountants among us are expected to be involved in the Investor phase, to ensure that proposed changes don’t break their ability to do their job, and to quickly upgrade to new features during the Activation phase to ensure that their audit results are still accurate when the new feature is deployed.