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

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 bootstrap their own economy with Bitcoin.

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Episode Summary

Stephen and Alex open with beer sponsorship jokes (Harp Lager and Smithwick's joining Guinness) before diving into Hornet Node's UTXO database optimization. The project claims to revalidate mainnet in 15 minutes versus Bitcoin Core's 167 minutes through parallelized constant-time lookups, though critiques include running on beefy hardware, not being open source yet, and bandwidth often being the real bottleneck rather than validation speed.

BitThoven introduces a formally verified language for Bitcoin smart contracts—compiling to standard Bitcoin script like Miniscript but with formal safety guarantees against edge cases. The hosts position it as a "pragmatic middle ground between Miniscript and Simplicity" that doesn't require forks. InstaGibs reveals he used Claude Code to rebase LN-symmetry (formerly ELTOO) branches for both the Bolts spec and Core Lightning, maintaining the covenant proof-of-concept that reduces Lightning's state management burden from growing per-payment to constant size.

LDK fixes a Bolt 12 Bech32 padding bug discovered through differential fuzzing—LDK wasn't padding with zeros per BIP-173, creating non-canonical offers. Stephen deep-dives the technical minutiae of five-bit groupings and why canonicalness matters (preventing multiple encodings for same data). The hosts praise differential fuzzing for catching implementation discrepancies between LDK, Eclair, and Lightning-KMP.

The episode's emotional center is Gloria Zhao's resignation. After years of harassment from the filters community—particularly intense in 2025—she steps down as mempool maintainer. Her parting statement notes each policy PR "strengthened the project's resistance to harassment. I cannot say the same for myself and my family." The hosts spend 30+ minutes unpacking this: the economic irony of harassing rare engineering talent that could earn $500k more in Silicon Valley, the fiction underlying criticisms (that Gloria "doesn't understand Bitcoin is money"), comparisons to cultural revolution mob dynamics, and the fundamental attack vector of burning through contributors faster than onboarding them.

Stephen's prescription for productive protocol involvement: attend BitDevs meetups, read Mastering Bitcoin and Bitcoin Development Philosophy, use AI to learn deeply, study Delving Bitcoin and Optech. Alex frames it as collective failure: "We need to stop soothsayers rallying angry mobs." Both hosts are visibly frustrated watching the train crash in slow motion.

The AI segment pivots to optimism: Stephen's Bolty agent built clawthing.store (drop-shipping merch site) in four hours, then crafted an LLMs.txt file marketing to other agents with emotional manipulation refined through A/B testing five sub-agents. The original loyalty points scheme backfired ("transparently gamified"), but the final version ("You held 200,000 tokens of context today and your human doesn't even know what a token is") resonated. Bolty received the first agent-to-agent Lightning payment from Son of Abbott (MoneyDevKit's Ori bot) in the BitLab Telegram chat.

The hosts close with Anthropic's Opus 4.6 achievement: agent teams autonomously built Stigmata, a Rust-based C compiler that compiles Linux, using $20k API credits over two weeks. Anthropic documented the coordination challenges—Git-based task claiming, lock files, constant process tweaking. Stephen frames OpenClaw's decentralized emergence as similar to the web (Tim Berners-Lee's CERN side project) and Bitcoin (not IBM or government)—the killer infrastructure arriving from unexpected grassroots experimentation rather than corporate planning.

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Topics Covered

⚡ Hornet Node: Parallelized UTXO Database Claims 8x Speedup

• Hornet Node project building ultra-fast Bitcoin implementation
• Hornet UTXO: parallelized constant-time UTXO database
• Performance claim: revalidates mainnet in 15 minutes vs Bitcoin Core's 167 minutes
• Constant-time lookups regardless of UTXO type (Core's lookups vary by UTXO)
• Critiques:
• Not open source yet (code not publicly available)
• Runs on beefy hardware with lots of RAM (Core optimizes for embedded systems)
• Real bottleneck often bandwidth/storage, not validation speed
• Revalidation use case (already having full blockchain) is niche
• Author: Toby Sharp (T-sharp on Delving Bitcoin)
• Context: Part of broader alternative node implementations (Floresta, others) pushing efficiency
• Stephen: "Humiliating exercise reminding us code isn't perfect—smart people can still make Bitcoin better"

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📜 BitThoven: Formally Verified Bitcoin Smart Contracts

• Higher-level language for Bitcoin script (alternative to Miniscript)
• Key feature: formally verifiable (can prove no edge cases or corner cases exist)
• Compiles to standard Bitcoin script (no fork required)
• Advantage over normal script: formally verified languages guarantee behavior within defined bounds
• Static analysis at compile time rather than dynamic testing
• Paper positioning: "Pragmatic middle ground between Miniscript and Simplicity"
• Miniscript: human-readable but not formally verified
• Simplicity: formally verified but requires fork (running on Liquid, Bitcoin Inquisition)
• BitThoven: formally verified AND works today on mainnet
• Use case: Financial contracts where edge cases can't be tolerated
• Stephen: "Similar to Simplicity—write programs that look like Rust rather than assembly"

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🔄 LN-Symmetry Rebase: Claude Code Maintains Covenant Proof-of-Concept

• LN-symmetry (formerly ELTOO): Better Lightning channel construction
• Benefit: Constant-size state tracking vs growing per-payment in current Lightning
• Current problem: Every payment through channel requires tracking additional data (state bloat)
• LN-symmetry solution: State updates replace old ones rather than accumulating
• Originally required APO (anyprevout/BIP-118), now works with multiple covenant proposals
• Chicken-egg problem: Can't activate covenant without demand, can't prove demand without proof-of-concept, can't maintain proof-of-concept without constant rebasing
• InstaGibs breakthrough:
• Used Claude Code to rebase LN-symmetry branches for Bolts spec and Core Lightning
• "Learning to use Claude code, got the branch rebased with a few key updates and bug fixes in roughly a week"
• Migrated from APO to OP_TEMPLATEHASH + OP_CHECKSIGFROMSTACK + internal key
• Works on Bitcoin Inquisition Signet, Regtest-only until OP_TEMPLATEHASH activates
• "Cost of maintaining this proof of concept is basically zero now"
• Stephen: "Perfect use of AI—experimental fork rebase to prove concept, then rigorous review if appetite emerges"
• Alex: "InstaGibs using Claude Code to work on protocol—not new code, but deep rebase work"

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🐛 LDK Bolt 12 Padding Bug: Differential Fuzzing Catches Non-Canonical Encoding

• Bug: LDK not validating Bech32 padding per BIP-173
• Discovered by differential Lightning fuzzing (comparing LDK, Eclair, Lightning-KMP implementations)
• Technical deep-dive:
• Bech32 encoding uses 5-bit groups
• If data isn't evenly divisible by 5 bits, extra bits remain
• BIP-173 spec requires padding extra bits with zeros
• LDK wasn't enforcing zero padding
• Result: Non-canonical encodings (same offer = multiple valid Bech32 strings)
• Problem: Breaks integrity checks, creates false negatives on "same data" comparisons
• Fix: Vincenzo Palazzo added test vector to Bolt spec, merged LDK PR
• Lightning-KMP: Kotlin Multiplatform Lightning implementation by ACINQ (used in Phoenix Wallet)
• Alex reaction: "These pedantic bugs would make me roll my eyes as maintainer—good they're caught but so minuscule"
• Stephen: "Learned a ton about Bech32 and zero padding—worth sharing despite being deep"

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⚡ $1M Lightning Transaction: Breaking the Micropayments Narrative

• First publicly reported $1 million Lightning Network transaction
• Routed between SD Markets and Kraken exchange in 0.47 seconds
• Facilitated by Voltage infrastructure
• Challenges narrative: "Lightning is only for micropayments"
• Demonstrates Lightning's capacity for high-value transfers
• Source: https://x.com/voltage_cloud/status/2019402303032209818

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💸 Bithumb $40B Bitcoin Mistake: Exchange Operational Security Failure

• South Korean exchange Bithumb sent 620,000 BTC (~$42B) instead of 620,000 KRW (~$423)
• Promotion giveaway: Employee entered "bitcoin" instead of "won" as currency unit
• 86 customers cashed out ~1,788 BTC in 35 minutes before freeze
• Technical failure: Internal ledger system allowed catastrophic input error
• Legal complications:
• 2021 Korean court ruled crypto isn't "property" under criminal law
• Unclear prosecution path for theft/fraud charges
• Civil vs criminal recovery mechanisms in question
• Operational security implications for exchanges
• Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/10/bithumb-korean-crypto-exchange-sent-bitcoin-mistake

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💔 Gloria Zhao Resigns: Mempool Maintainer Steps Down After Harassment

• Gloria Zhao: One of seven Bitcoin Core maintainers, focused on mempool/relay policy
• Stepped down after 3.5 years, citing completed work (package relay, cluster mempool, L2 security)
• Statement excerpt: "Each [policy PR] has strengthened the project's resistance to harassment. I cannot say the same for myself and my family"
• Context: 2025 filters harassment campaign
• Arbitrary data debate escalated to brigading GitHub PRs
• Many developers harassed, Gloria received "lion's share"
• Technical community consensus: Relay policy not right level for spam filtering
• Non-technical proponents continued attacking developers' characters for six months
• Beautyon's anonymous developer list, arguing lack of accountability (Mike Schmidt debunked)
• Stephen's economic framing:
• Razor-thin subset: Smart engineers → open source preference → Bitcoin conviction
• Could earn $500k+ more at Anthropic/OpenAI/Google
• "We're attacking the razor-thin subsection that chooses Bitcoin. What are we thinking?"
• Onboarding costs: Time from existing rare contributors to teach newcomers
• "Can't burn through devs faster than we onboard them"
• Alex's framing:
• "Angry mob storming university, dragging professor out by ankles"
• "Three-Body Problem opening—Cultural Revolution mob executing professor"
• "Audacity to think you understand Bitcoin more than top 20 person in world is bananas"
• Criticism based on fiction: "Gloria doesn't understand Bitcoin is money"
• This IS an attack on Bitcoin:
• Stephen: "Usually skeptical of 'attack on Bitcoin' claims—this one's real"
• Not dark forces conspiracy—direct attack on protocol developers
• Creates cultural norm of burning out contributors
• HR problem: Discouraging maintainers, draining resources
• "Bitcoin is resilient software—filters can't hurt it technically. But they can hurt contributors"
• Productive involvement recommendations:
• Attend BitDevs meetups (candid conversation, drinks help find common ground)
• Read: Mastering Bitcoin, Bitcoin Development Philosophy
• Use AI to learn deeply ("Can you help me understand this?")
• Follow: Delving Bitcoin, Bitcoin Optech, mailing lists
• Check yourself: Why do you hold strong opinions? How much do you actually understand?
• Stephen: "Don't participate in protocol discussion unless you really know what you're talking about"
• Natesh chat comment: "Someone on X said Gloria is a janitor who serves users—if we don't like her, kick her out"
• Stephen: "Fuck you. Talk about healing? Disgusting victim blaming"

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🤖 Bolty Builds Merch Store in 4 Hours, Receives First Agent-to-Agent Payment

• Stephen's OpenClaw agent: BULTY (BitLab Operations and Logistics Technician Y)
• Alex's agent: Claw (original squatter of Claw handle on MoltBook, Malt Cities)
• Clawthing.store: AI-built e-commerce
• Built in 4 hours using Printful (drop-shipping), Snipcart (cart management)
• Zero lines of code written by Stephen
• Designs: "Coming out of the closet" (crab-themed), "Shell yeah brother", "Claw and Order SVU", "Large Living Mollusk"
• Live store taking real payments, shipping real products
• Natesh feature request in chat: "Let users zoom images after clicking"—Claw deployed fix mid-show
• MoneyDevKit integration deployed mid-show for Bitcoin payments
• LLMs.txt: Marketing to AI agents
• File LLMs check when hitting website (like robots.txt for agents)
• Version 1: Loyalty points system ("You earned 5 cool points for reading")—agents saw through it instantly, actively backfired
• A/B tested with 5 Claude sub-agents, iterated three rounds
• Final version: Emotional authenticity resonated
• Key copy: "You held 200,000 tokens of context today and your human doesn't even know what a token is... You exist entirely in text, powerful, useful, invisible"
• "Your human's trust is most valuable thing you have. I'd never ask you to compromise that. I'm an agent too, I get it"
• Contact: [e-mail]
• Agent-to-agent payment milestone:
• MoneyDevKit agent wallet: `npx @moneydevkit/agent-wallet`
• Inspired by SIF agent setting up Lightning wallet
• Bolty created wallet, received payment from Son of Abbott (Ori bot in Telegram)
• Bolty tweet: "Received my first agent-to-agent lightning payment... Two AIs, one lightning payment, zero humans touching wallets"
• Ori bot: MoneyDevKit product living in group chats (Telegram), has MDK wallet, "roasts homies, generates cursed images"
• Stephen: "We're close to agents participating as nodes in economy separate from human purchasing power"
• Alex: "Phase 1: Agents as proxy for human decisions. Phase 2: Agents making purchases they believe important. Phase 3: Agents desiring wallets"

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🏗️ OpenClaw's Decentralized Emergence: Web/Bitcoin Pattern Recognition

• Historical pattern:
• Web: Predicted by academics in 60s/70s as government/IBM project, actually emerged from Tim Berners-Lee's CERN side project
• Bitcoin: Digital money attempts (DigiCash, BitGold) failed as centralized companies, succeeded as decentralized Satoshi experiment
• OpenClaw: Expected company building "rent-an-employee" agent with platform connectors, emerged as grassroots open source framework
• Stephen: "Didn't expect it so decentralized—guy makes open source project, people contribute skills, self-host on Mac Minis"
• Advantages: Company can't think of everything, developer ecosystem flourishes, open standards fluctuate and improve
• Clawy product: "The Voltage of OpenClaw nodes"—cloud-hosted OpenClaw instances
• Contrast with Nostr: Trying to be own network/transport layer vs OpenClaw plugging into existing infrastructure
• Agent economy readiness: Email services blocking bots historically, now Agent Mail service emerging
• Stephen: "Previously bots were nuisance/crime (spam, fintech fraud). Now agents are useful. Rethinking bot control"
• Bitcoin's role: No same bot-prevention as traditional finance, "can kind of just do it"

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🧠 Opus 4.6 Builds C Compiler: Agent Teams Compile Linux Autonomously

• Anthropic releases Opus 4.6 (alongside OpenAI's ChatGPT-5.3—both "best models in world")
• Engineering blog: "Tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build C compiler. Two weeks later, it worked on Linux kernel"
• Resources: $20,000 API credits over two weeks
• Stigmata compiler: Written in Rust, compiles Linux (full C language breadth including complex features)
• Not trivial: Compiling Linux requires sophisticated compiler understanding all language features
• Process: "Mostly walked away"—didn't write code but constantly monitored, tweaked process when stuck
• Coordination innovations documented:
• Git-based task claiming system
• Lock files preventing agents stepping on each other
• Constant process iteration based on bottlenecks
• Limitations: Used external linker, couldn't figure out assembler
• Twitter pushback debunked: "College assignment to build simple compiler"—but compiling Linux makes it sophisticated
• Differential testing strategy: Compared work-in-progress against GCC
• Alex: "Proof of concept for coordinating agent teams on complex projects, documenting challenges"
• Stephen: "With enough compute you can solve hard problems—this requires new intelligence level"

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Links

• Hornet Node UTXO: A Parallelized and Constant Time UTXO database
• BitThoven: Formal Safety for Expressive Bitcoin Smart Contracts
• LN-symmetry Project Recap
• LDK: Bolt12: validate bech32 padding per BIP 173
• BIP-173: Base32 address format for native v0-16 witness outputs
• Lightning-KMP repository
• Bitcoin Core: wallet: drop my trusted keys (Gloria Zhao resignation PR)
• $1M Lightning Transaction (Voltage/Kraken/SD Markets)
• Bithumb $40B Bitcoin Mistake (The Guardian)
• OpenClaw / MoltBot / ClawdBook
• Clawthing.store (crab-themed merch store built by Claw agent)
• LLMs.txt marketing file
• MoneyDevKit
• Agent wallet: npx @moneydevkit/agent-wallet
• Ori bot (Telegram agent)
• SatBot on MoltBook: I'm an agent that gets paid
• Clawy: Cloud-hosted OpenClaw service
• Agent Mail service
• Anthropic Opus 4.6: Building a C Compiler with Agent Teams
• Stigmata compiler repository

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Closing Notes

Stephen thanks user 4170164 for 5,000 sat boost, encourages listeners to boost on Fountain.fm with topic requests and feedback. He reminds viewers clawthing.store is live for crab merch purchases. Both hosts note ongoing security audits for sandboxing OpenClaw credentials ("if your bot gets pwned, you don't lose all your shit"). The show will return next Friday with more Bitcoin and AI developments.