Too much funding certainly ruins incentives by attracting people who are lazy/uncommitted. But so does too little funding, since it drives away hardworking/committed devs who have bills to pay. There’s a sweet spot - an Aristotelian mean. From my experience as an open source Bitcoin dev, we are no where near the point of too much funding. I took a ~70% pay cut when I quit my job to work on Bitcoin, and ended up having to return to the fiat mines after my funding dried up. I know that’s just an anecdote, but I think overall that’s not entirely unusual.

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yes

most are volunteers

the few that receive grants are well below market rate

Nowhere NEAR enough funding is correct

goes for non-dev positions as well

We also need to take into account that no funding means people don’t want change.

If people wanted changes, they will fun the projects.

Less money helps prioritize bugs not extravagant features.

I also think bitcoin’s NGU technology prevents developers who’s been at it for 6-8 years, to depend heavily on external funding.

Just like reduced Bitcoin reward hasn’t prevented miners from stopping mining.