This Week in Bitcoin: Bringing the “NOW” to the Orange Dev Suite \ ~hyperlinks

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This Week in Bitcoin: Bringing the “NOW” to the Orange Dev Suite

2198 sats \ 23 comments \ @sorukumar 16 Jun bitcoin

All,

Here is a new addition to the orange-dev-suite: This Week in Bitcoin.

It surfaces PRs merged, hot PRs, hot discussions from Delving and the mailing list, plus contributor highlights. Each with short, pleb-accessible (value-focused) AI summaries.

I may schedule it as a weekly post on X and LinkedIn also next week after incorporating feedback. Depending on how it goes, we may have a human review/edit the AI write up for each PR and discussion.

On the “why”:

I’ve been exploring ways to create a roadmap of sorts for Bitcoin. h/t @schmidty (X Post). This felt like a practical first step using the same data pipeline behind Orange Dev Tracker and Network

The broader suite now gives a clearer picture:

I’ve cleaned up the dashboards for better consistency. Still very much WIP. Feedback tab is live (a feedback from @koob ) .

Pass on your thoughts on what works and what can be improved.

view all related items

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @Murch 26 Jun

HWI is maintained by Ava Chow not Greg Sanders, and Jonas Nick stepped back this week, nominating Sebastian Falbesoner to replace him.

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @sorukumar OP 26 Jun

I'll review it, to understand what is going on. I've been pulling a lot of this info from commits and keys on GitHub, and then use your feedback to override any data mismatches

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @Murch 26 Jun

Also, Jonas is at Blockstream and Greg is at Spiral, btw.

1 sat \ 2 replies \ @Murch 26 Jun

I followed the link you posted on the AMA thread, and then looked a round a bit. In the top 20 of the directory, I saw a name that surprised me: Prayank.

The profile links to the BIPs of BtcDrak, and emails from BtcDrak, but also later to emails from Prayank. The linked github profile is "prayank", but BtcDrak’s github profile is BtcDrak.

I think two different contributors got incorrectly merged here. Prayank and BtcDrak are different people.

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @sorukumar OP 26 Jun

Thanks. I have an identity resolution script, and anything it can't capture I put in the identity curated list. So I'll handle the two there and run it

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @Murch 26 Jun

Prayank deleted his GitHub account, so that might have been one source of confusion here. I don’t think that the Prayank that posted to the mailing list has anything to do with github.com/prayank.

1 sat \ 3 replies \ @Murch 23 Jun

Ava is at Localhost Research and was previously at Blockstream

1 sat \ 2 replies \ @sorukumar OP 26 Jun

fixed it. can you please help me with timelines, at least for all maintainers.

https://github.com/sorukumar/orange-dev-data/blob/main/metadata/sponsors.json

I see that chaincode is assigned to you.

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @Murch 26 Jun

I was at BitGo 2017-04–2020-08, Chaincode Labs 2020-10–2024-12, and have been with Localhost Research since 2025-01.

I am not sure how much of people’s employment dates and grants is public information, so I’d have to search for that myself. A lot of people have been funded by more than one employer or grant giver over time, and sussing that out would be more digging than I can offer right now. Here are some resources that might be helpful:

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @Murch 26 Jun

A few more things that I saw glancing at the json file:

Russell Yanofsky and RyanOfsky are the same person
roconnor-blockstream and Russell O'Connor are the same person
There are two Sergi Delgado Segura
Pieter was at Blockstream before joining Chaincode Labs
John Newbery was at Chaincode Labs before founding Brink
Greg Sanders was previously paid by BitMex and Blockstream
Carl Dong was with Blockstream and Chaincode Labs (I don’t think he ever was at Spiral)
Martin Zumsande was also at Chaincode Labs
Bruno is funded by Vinteum
Josiah Baker is now with 2140
w0xlt is not Yuvraj Chiplunkar

1 sat \ 8 replies \ @Murch 16 Jun

Thanks, that’s cool! One nit: I noticed that you list Sebastian van Staa as a new contributor (svanstaa), but I think he has had several PRs merged in Bitcoin Core (around 5 or 6?), there might be an issue there.

132 sats \ 4 replies \ @sorukumar OP 17 Jun

Great catch. You're right. Sebastian has dozens of PRs merged in bitcoin-core/guix.sigs.

However, our current data pipeline only tracks the main bitcoin/bitcoin repository. Since PR #34636 was his first PR merged into the main repo (on June 10th), the script flagged him as a new contributor this week.

To make this clearer on developer profiles, I'm going to start displaying both the authored commit date and the PR merge date.

Quick question: As we expand our data sources (we're already adding BIPs), do you think we should also include satellite repos like secp256k1 and bitcoin-core/gui in our main analytics?

41 sats \ 3 replies \ @Murch 17 Jun

Sorry, I made a mistake with my search parameters regarding svanstaa, I agree it’s his first PR he authored.

Yeah, secp256k1 and bitcoin-core/gui would make sense to include.

22 sats \ 2 replies \ @sorukumar OP 18 Jun

Thanks for the feedback, @Murch. That's a big reason we've been able to make all these improvements to the dashboard.

added secp256k1 and bitcoin-core/gui, plus repos like bitcoin-core/guix.sigs. on the profile page, though, I still break the commits into 'core' and 'ecosystem'.

here is how svanstaa profile looks like now.

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @Murch 18 Jun

Interesting idea! Glancing at this, the same separation should then maybe also be applied to the other metrics then. E.g., PRs Reviewed.

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @sorukumar OP 19 Jun

Will add it in the next iteration.

114 sats \ 2 replies \ @Murch 16 Jun

Looking around on the website a bit, I noticed that the list of maintainers seems to have some quirks. Here are a few things I noticed:

Luke Dashjr, Cory Fields, and Carl Dong were never Bitcoin Core maintainers.
Sebastian Kung only became a maintainer this year
Ava Chow has been a maintainer since 2021
Marco Falke was a maintainer from 2016–2023, not 2015–present
AFAIK, Jonas Schnelli started in 2015, not 2013
Gavin Andresen was maintainer until 2016, not 2015

This list should be accurate and also has sources for most dates: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/88649/5406

22 sats \ 1 reply \ @sorukumar OP 17 Jun

here are the details:

I cross-referenced the StackExchange link you mentioned. Our dataset[https://github.com/sorukumar/orange-dev-data/blob/main/metadata/maintainers.json] actually matches the StackExchange details perfectly, but I had supplemented it with commit data directly from the repository, which caused some quirks in the UI.

On the dates for Gavin and Jonas: The data pipeline was dynamically inferring their timelines based on their earliest and latest merge commit dates rather than their official appointment dates. In Gavin's case, his last actual merge action was in 2015 (even though he held keys until 2016). For Jonas, he had made a local merge commit on a PR branch back in 2013, which tricked the script into expanding his timeline. I've updated the logic to strictly use their official appointment dates, so the chart is now historically accurate.
On Luke Dashjr: He does have about 9 merge commits in our data from the 2011-2016 era. I assume this was before the modern trusted-keys protocol for merge commits was strictly enforced.
On Strategic Maintainers: In the UI, I use dotted/hollow bars for Cory Fields, Carl Dong, and Sebastian Kung (sedited) from 2019–2025. This visually distinguishes that they were Strategic Maintainers (e.g., maintaining the build system, security, or Guix) but did not hold keys to merge into the master branch.

Refining the UI for this chart is still a pending item. I'm planning to move it from the Tracker ("what") over to the Network dashboard ("who") for a cleaner separation of concerns in next iteration.

By the way, what do you think about the approach of visually distinguishing and showing Strategic Maintainers alongside the traditional Committers?

95 sats \ 0 replies \ @Murch 17 Jun

Regarding Luke’s merge commits, it looks like the same thing happened there that also happened to Jonas. I tracked down there of his merge commits. One was the last commit in the PR https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/7192, another was the second in https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/7192, the third was the fourth in https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/505. The first two PRs later got merged by Mara van der Laan, the third by Gavin Andresen.

On Strategic Maintainers: In the UI, I use dotted/hollow bars for Cory Fields, Carl Dong, and Sebastian Kung (sedited) from 2019–2025. This visually distinguishes that they were Strategic Maintainers (e.g., maintaining the build system, security, or Guix) but did not hold keys to merge into the master branch.

At least among Bitcoin Core contributors the term maintainer has a very specific meaning. I’m aware that these three led big projects, but I haven’t heard the term maintainer in that context before. Maybe a different term such as "project lead" would fit better?

113 sats \ 2 replies \ @Murch 18 Jun

How are "Retired", "Fading", and "Steady" determined?

E.g., in this screenshot, Christian Decker is marked as retired, but actively working on CLN,

Nicolas Dorier is marked retired, but maintainer of BTCPay Server and NBitcoin,

I haven’t really seen anything from Aaron Voisine in forever (had a hard time reaching him regarding some of his BIPs), while he’s marked as "Fading",

and Brandon Black is marked as retired, but has contributed review to the BIPs repository (and Optech) this year.

Just saw, that Steven Roose is also marked as retired, but he co-authored a BIP this year and is working on one of the Ark projects.

22 sats \ 1 reply \ @sorukumar OP 19 Jun

I'll have a look and report back.

Basically, there's super low activity in the last 3 years compared to their past contributions. I ended up tweaking and reached to the definition to mark Gavin Andresen as retired . he was showing up as active because of his 2022 comment saying he is retired.

At a high level, if someone had, say, 20 reviews before the last 3 years and only 1 in the recent period, they're labeled retired. less than 5 reviews makes them "fading."

I haven't accounted for work in btcpayserver or NBitcoin or Lightning yet, so I see that as a data limitation. However, I need to rethink the methodology , it's even marking 2026 contributors as retired.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @Murch 19 Jun

Yeah, I think Gavin left the space in 2016, he should definitely show up as retired

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @nitter 16 Jun

https://twiiit.com/bitschmidty/status/1986100498567499789