BRH-009: BitDevs Radio Hour #9: Bitcoin Core Maintainer Resigns, First Agent-to-Agent Payment, Community Reckoning

About this episode

The episode discusses Bitcoin protocol advancements, community issues, and AI developments.

Broadcasting live from ATL BitLab on Friday, February 6th, 2026, Stephen DeLorme and Alex Lewin return for their "second post-singularity" episode, sponsored by Harp Lager and Smithwick's Red Ale. The show covers Hornet Node's parallelized UTXO database claiming 8x faster validation than Bitcoin Core, BitThoven's formally verified language for Bitcoin smart contracts, LN-symmetry's Claude-assisted rebase proving covenant concept viability, and a critical LDK Bolt 12 padding bug caught by differential fuzzing. Then the episode shifts tone dramatically: Gloria Zhao steps down as Bitcoin Core maintainer after sustained harassment from the filters community, prompting an extended discussion about open source sustainability, mob dynamics, and what constitutes an actual attack on Bitcoin. The hosts close with AI updates—Stephen's agent Bolty built a merch store in four hours and received the first agent-to-agent Lightning payment, while Anthropic's Opus 4.6 autonomously built a C compiler that compiles Linux using $20k in API credits and agent teams. It's a mix of protocol optimizations, formal verification advances, a sobering reckoning with community toxicity, and watching AI agents…

People in this episode

Hosts: Stephen DeLorme, Alex Lewin

Topics covered

• Bitcoin Core
• open source sustainability
• community toxicity
• AI advancements
• protocol optimizations
• smart contracts

Keywords

• Bitcoin
• Hornet Node
• Gloria Zhao
• AI agents
• smart contracts
• open source
• community dynamics

Sponsors

Harp Lager, Smithwick's Red Ale

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Hornet Node, Bitcoin Core, BitThoven, LN-symmetry, Anthropic

Products: Harp Lager, Smithwick's Red Ale

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