Lol, the flat-earther-like Conspiracy theories about blockstream core are now, like flat-eartherism, to the point where I can give you all the facts in the world and you'll still just ignore them and plug your ears because you want to believe that Roger is right about blockstream and that your worldview model is not being challenged.

If you had one shred of decency, you'd investigate the following, easily proven or disproven points for yourself:

1. Blockstream isn't even the company with the most bitcoin devs. 100% of Chaincode's devs are Bitcoin core devs: http://chaincode.com/#team

2. The 'corporate money' that blockstream accepted, AXA, is just a French investment bank, not goldman sachs. There was no contract stating that AXA could direct blockstream's efforts or leadership in any way, much less any of their partners.

3. Adam Back is one of the most well-documented cypherpunks on anyone's record. Before he wrote Hash Cash, which brought proof of work to where it is today, he worked on the systems that underlie TOR and Bittorrent. Now he's full time on bitcoin. Why in the hell would anyone assume that someone who spent decades working on the most important decentralized, cypherpunk projects ever be trying to harm the latest one by centralizing it? That's compelling evidence alone, if not proof, that Roger's off his rocker for all those baseless accusations he makes of Back on twitter.

4. At Blockstream, every developer is HIGHLY incentivized to make bitcoin's price go up. At hiring $10,000 worth of bitcoin is purchased (part of their hiring contract) and set aside for them, and they can't touch it for the first year. After year one, each paycheck is paid in it for four years, equally distributed over that time. This is well documented. If developers there saw plans to harm bitcoin, then they'd likely fight those plans to keep their paycheck valuable.

5. The most 'valuable target' in bitcoin core for any infiltrating source would naturally be the Commit keys, which allow the Wladamir-led team of core code cleaners (referred to as Janitors within the dev community) the final say on what becomes bitcoin and what doesn't. Commit access is a right on Github to add a change to the git repository. Anyone with a Github account can write changes and propose them to the bitcoin core code, but only those with commit keys can actual add those proposed changes to the repo.

Today there are 4 bitcoin developers who work at Blockstream. Sipa is one, and although he has a commit key, due to the scaling debate he doesnt use his for scaling changes. Gmax used to have the 5th key, but gave it back because of the scaling debate. He doesn't even have the access he used to anymore.

If blockstream was trying to take over Bitcoin or lead it's governance in any way, they've not only failed, they've hobbled themselves so badly at it that it's now impossible.

Stop believing LIARS. Blockstream is one of the good guys.

Core is the only team that can make the upgrade safe.