What It’s Like to Review Bitcoin’s Code

On June 19, Chaincode developer John Newbery gathered a group of developers to examine a proposed change to bitcoin’s code.

Taking place via Internet Relay Chat (IRC), the topic was whether the change, which would help prevent a group of rogue miners from speeding up the rate at which bitcoin’s blocks are produced, is a positive one with limited security risks or adverse impacts.

Newbery’s goal, then, is to pass on what he knows about reviewing such code.

Was this ‘timewarp attack’ stopper a solid change?

“The timewarp exploits this by pushing the difficulty adjustment block way into the future, and then the next block back into the present,” Newbery wrote, explaining the attack vector.

But the fact that Newbery is even holding these sessions at all can be seen as a sign of the maturity of bitcoin’s developer community, as this is one example of how project’s top coders have been hard at work making the project more inclusive. The process for…