what happens when they (TPTB) notice? What's the countermeasures such an initiative should introduce to maintain its integrity; and most importantly, how could one rule out a (future) "chief software engineer" retaliate and alter a piece of code making a fork and dreadout the project together with the whole community?
Critical code paths need to be highly scrutinized on any change. After the code is stabilized, the community should be alerted when a change is made to the so identified "critical paths".
Checksums need to be enforced with a block chain to create a
Web of Trust.
Being open source, you can't kill it. You can Whack-A-Mole one protocol but another protocol pops up instantly. When the economy becomes valuable then hackers will be there to keep it running. Protocol tweaks can be made independent of critical paths.
There are many defenses, but the question is do we as a community pool the resources to get 'er done. That has been my point all along as to why I was dissatisfied. We are not moving fast enough with our immense resources as a community.
The sooner it is not hinged on one person, the better. Looks like in private it is becoming dehinged from me as we speak which a major development. I suppose it was necessary for me to speak recently. But I hope y'all understand I like to go back to being just the many names of AnonyMint.
Note even compromised compilers can be defended against:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/countering_trus.htmlIn terms of return on investment for the community, the key to scaling beyond bitcointalk, crypto, and dark markets is to
enable new popular markets that can't be serviced by Bitcoin nor credit cards nor existing altcoins.
PS: Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental (or not).
Lol can I at least finish my beer first.