I want to see a future when every major player in the Bitcoin space maintains their own version of Bitcoin core, like OCEAN is doing with Knots.
Discussion
That's a great idea.
Yes. If Bitcoin is a protocol, why only one client? That seems like it's pretty centralized 🤔
There are tons of bitcoin clients
There are tons of clients that connect to Bitcoin nodes. But what I want is many different nodes.
Sure, they'd all be forks of Core, most likely. But I think Knots has shown that you can tailor Core to the needs of your business or ideology without sacrificing consensus.
btcd is not a fork of core
Be that as it may, having a version that doesn't set itself apart is both difficult, and maybe detrimental from a consistency perspective.
They would need pros to manage the fork of Core. Like OCEAN has Luke to manage Knots. I think it opens the door to many more opinionated Core-based nodes that all maintain consensus.
User beware of accidentally forking off the network if you use some janky version, naturally. Which is why I think bigger businesses will see the need more than individuals.
Bitcoin Core should be just a core
It should not be opinionated, and do its only responsibility which is consensus which must not go wrong.
Policy and features can be added on top on independent codebases.