It's worth thinking about the risks to #crypto systems caused by underpaying those who maintain the infrastructure.

When people feel underpaid, they may become disgruntled & want to "get back at" the org, whether by quitting at a bad time, trying to sabotage the org, etc. https://twitter.com/josephdelong/status/1380158616414658565

The open source & crypto communities have what appears to be cognitive dissonance on how humans respond to incentives.

The game theory built into the systems assumes that everyone is out for themselves & is motivated by purely economic considerations. That's what supposedly creates the security model for cryptoeconomic systems.

But, protocol infrastructure devs are apparently not supposed to be governed by economic incentives, at least not in the same way.

The people doing the most critical work for the systems are not paid accordingly. Seems like an incentive mismatch.

There is a lot of organizational behavior / human resources academic literature about the risks of underpaying employees. Greater risk of theft, internal cybersecurity attacks, vulnerability to bribes by competitors.

Some may argue that crypto systems are at low risk from disgruntled protocol devs b/c:

-the code is open source, so one can't hide attacks.
-devs are 'fungible' in that another dev can always step in.
-devs get credibility/rep/future earning opps due to work on protocols.

We know that some software fixes have been adopted w/o disclosure of what they were really about (Bitcoin 2018 inflation bug, Zcash crypto proof flaw), so I'm skeptical that it would be impossible to hide an attack, especially in an emergency situation.

Also, the talk about the fungibility/non-fungibility of devs is very confusing.

If protocol devs are fungible, meaning that others from the open source dev community could readily step into their shoes if they quit, then it makes sense that they wouldn't be paid very much.

If they are non-fungible devs (NFDs) , then their expertise makes them special, unique, necessary, in high demand, and it would make sense for them to be paid a LOT (especially for TRILLION dollar protocols).

There is a lot of talk about how complex these systems are, how one has to work for years in Bitcoin development, for instance, to understand how all the different pieces of the code interact w/ one another, how people have so much respect for core devs.

The pay they receive says they are fungible devs, while the expectations placed on them & the gratitude people express when they manage crises say they are NFDs.

Which is it?

The irony is that these underpaid folks are the very people to whom critical bugs would be reported, and who the system most counts on to act with competence & good faith in moments of crisis.

(For recent thread, see https://twitter.com/angela_walch/status/1377787122380341251

This problem creates vulnerabilities at the foundations of the system. Vulnerabilities that flow through to structures built atop the protocols.

**Note that I am not accusing any of the protocol devs/researchers of being disgruntled or acting against the systems they work on. I am analyzing the incentives created by the current situation.