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.
Discussion
yes
most are volunteers
the few that receive grants are well below market rate
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.