Jeff Garzik, a veteran Linux contributor and early open source developer who contributed to the Bitcoin project from 2010 to 2017, has released a series of new videos detailing his time working with Bitcoin’s anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
Garzik joined the project in July 2010, contributing to early versions of the software, and making notable pull requests including the first proposal to raise block size limitas well as the first proposal for Cancel support for free transactionsDuring Satoshi’s tenure as moderator, Jarzik was accepting withdrawal requests, including working to separate the mining code from Satoshi’s client.
A highlight of the new videos is Jarzik sharing his memories of his time with Satoshi, including a new comment on whether Satoshi is a single individual or a group.
“Satoshi as a programmer is more like a lone genius of the kind depicted in the movie ‘A Beautiful Mind,’” Jarzik recalls.
“When I was studying computer science, we thought of ourselves as programmers, and we noticed that some other disciplines, like chemists, biologists, and physicists, had to do it, but they didn’t treat it as a profession. Satoshi was the same way.”
In this way, Garzik says he believes Satoshi knew the problem he wanted to solve, but lacked an understanding of “modules,” “unit testing,” and other basics that “computer science students learn.”
“He very cleverly extracted well-known and well-studied cryptographic solutions, and put all of these solutions together in a new and interesting way.” Garzik saidadding:
Elsewhere, Garzik reiterated his belief that Satoshi was a “self-taught” programmer, claiming that the Bitcoin founder was modest about his limitations.
In other statements, he spoke about Satoshi’s mood and working methods, noting his strict focus on Bitcoin.
“Satoshi never shied away from this topic. He never posted any personal information, never talked about his mood or the time of day,” he says. One section“It’s always been 100% about Bitcoin.”
In total, the memories cover a period of 6 months until Nakamoto resigned from the project in January 2011, at which point Garzik’s friend and colleague Gavin Andresen took over as the project’s chief maintainer.
The videos come during a year in which other Bitcoin contributors have gone public with their correspondence with Satoshi, with Martti “Sirius” Malmi and Adam Back publishing hundreds of pages of previously unseen emails in connection with a public trial in the UK.
While Garzik has yet to release the emails with Satoshi, the videos produced by a new company he founded, Hemi Network, represent the developer’s most public discussion of the topic in some time.
Launched in July, the Hemi Network is advertised as a “layer 2 standard protocol for superior scalability, security, and interoperability, powered by Bitcoin and Ethereum.”
This work comes after a period after 2017 where Garzik became more interested in blockchain networks that are not tied to any specific cryptocurrency at the base layer, a path that includes Metronome, a project from 2017 that also includes Seeking compatibility with multiple blockchains.
Garzik left the Bitcoin project that year after serving as chief maintainer. solid fork Bitcoin protocol which despite early startup support never officially launched.
You can access the full video playlist below:
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