How You Can Contribute to Bitcoin ABC

3 min readApr 27, 2020

The goal of Bitcoin ABC is to build the software infrastructure needed for Bitcoin Cash to be successful.

We are “building the roads” for Bitcoin Cash. We are building the platform for potentially tens of thousands of new Bitcoin Cash businesses as we scale Bitcoin Cash to billions of daily users.

How can you contribute?

Anyone can discover development priorities and contribute at reviews.bitcoinabc.org/maniphest.

Here is a complete and public guide on how to contribute to Bitcoin Cash protocol development available in the Bitcoin ABC GitHub:

https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

First Steps

New developers can create an account on reviews.bitcoinabc.org and immediately get started. Specific skill sets are helpful but new people with varied skill sets are very much welcome.

Due to the small size of the Bitcoin ABC team and our current lack of sufficient resources, we have to establish clear priorities. We simply do not have much time available to educate inexperienced or untrained developers, or to bring them up to speed on the Bitcoin ABC codebase.

If we invest too much time into onboarding new people, there is the risk of creating a net-negative result. This is because time spent supporting those who cannot make significant and consistent ongoing contributions is time we are not spending improving the Bitcoin ABC codebase and achieving the Bitcoin Cash roadmap.

And the time of qualified developers is a finite resource. So please be patient, and understand that although help is welcome and encouraged, sometimes the current developers may not have a lot of time to devote to helping onboard new people.

When the team grows and more people are available to share this load, it will become easier to manage this. This requires steady and ongoing funding.

What is the path of a new Bitcoin ABC developer/contributor?

A new developer can contact us, expressing an interest via social media (Facebook or Twitter), Telegram or email. However, this step is entirely unnecessary. Developers can skip straight to step 2 if you so desire.
Join reviews.bitcoinabc.org (our Phabricator instance).
Select an item to work on, likely from reviews.bitcoinabc.org/maniphest.
Create some code and submit it back via our Phabricator instance.
The code is discussed by the team, and changes can be made. Developers signal their approval and it may be accepted.
Once code review is complete, Arcanist (Phabricator tooling) is used to push changes.

Team members self-select tasks based on expertise, interest, direction from Amaury and expressed priority level of the tasks. Amaury and Antony also provide guidance and direction where needed.

Decision-Making Process

We hold discussions in our Slack, Telegram and private communication channels with multiple individuals, teams and the representatives of entities in the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem.

Technical decision-making usually happens at reviews.bitcoinabc.org .

Bitcoin ABC is focused on Bitcoin Cash protocol development that is sustainable. Therefore, we establish priorities around this that greatly inform our decision-making processes, taking into account the resources available to us.

For example, we generally resist short-term fixes that create new technical debt and prefer to focus on solutions that set us up for ongoing success in scaling to realize the P2P electronic cash vision.

When needed, our Lead Developer Amaury Séchet is the final decision-maker.

Join Us

Join the Bitcoin ABC team in building censorship-resistant P2P electronic cash for billions of daily users and realizing the vision that is Bitcoin Cash!

Visit fund.bitcoinabc.org to find our business plan, budget, delivery timeline, funding options and feedback mechanisms.

We can only do this together.

Got questions? Ask us below.

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