what if the developers themselves are coerced to sneak something in?
This is certainly a problem in bitcoin XT where only
one? two? individual(s) have commit access.
You can still download it and check it does it?
Also when a release comes out, it usually has a checksum and a signature, any alteration after the release is easily detactable..
So if wallet 2.0 comes out, and it has a hash, but if you sneak something shady in it after, it wont match the hash of the 2.0.
My concern is after people have switched to XT due do the 8 Mb max block size. In that scenario, and assuming they will be coerced to put some unwanted code (eg. CoinValidationand Hearn was pretty much for that IIRC), how are we going to switch back to Bitcoin Core? We can pretty much assume we won't, with the result that TPTB will have successfully co-opted bitcoin.
I'd rather see the 8 Mb change in Core, or stay at 1 Mb until more people have governance over XT.