Bitcoin is a distributed system.
That means there is no center. To make a pun, no “core.” Bitcoin exists because of everyone participating in some way; buying and hodling, sending and receiving, running a node, mining, building some service or protocol on top of it. It exists as the culmination of everyone adding their contributing piece of the whole.
But underneath all of those contributions and pieces, Bitcoin is ultimately a network run by software. Without that software, no one can buy and hodl, no one can send and receive, or run a node, or mine, or contribute any piece to form any whole. Without software, there is no Bitcoin.
Software doesn’t write itself. People have to write that software.
Many people have filled that role over the years. The first was Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator. After him came people like Martti Malmi, Hal Finney, and many others in the years after. All of them are why Bitcoin is still here functioning today.
Because software development is such a highly specialized field, much of the work of Bitcoin developers goes unnoticed, unappreciated, and in many cases not even understood by a large swath of the people around the world who own and use bitcoin.
This issue aims to bring a greater depth of understanding of the work done on Bitcoin Core, the predominant software implementation of the Bitcoin protocol. The articles inside go through past work done to improve Bitcoin Core, as well as the Bitcoin protocol in general, work coming to fruition in the near future, and some of the general thinking behind how developers approach different problems.
Many of the articles are written by developers contributing to Bitcoin Core themselves.
It has been my absolute pleasure to work on taking this issue from an idea to the physical copy you hold in your hand right now, and help these developers to explain their work to you themselves.
Hopefully you walk away with a greater understanding of what it has taken to keep Bitcoin functioning all of these years, and what it will take for many years to come.
-Shinobi
Don’t miss your chance to own The Core Issue — featuring articles written by many Core Developers explaining the projects they work on themselves!
This piece is the Letter from the Editor featured in the latest Print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The Core Issue. We’re sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue.