Bitcoin Legend Mike Hearn Endorses Flipstarter

Decentralized Crowdfunding On Bitcoin Cash

Published in

The Crypto Kiosk

5 min readAug 9, 2023

Flipstarter is the decentralized crowdfunding service created by the Bitcoin Cash community to solve the issues of funding developments, marketing, and more.

One of the Bitcoin legends, Mike Hearn, indicated (in 2022) his admiration for the accomplishments of the Flipstarter project.

Mike Hearn also expressed concerns about the speculative perspective that rules the crypto market and stated his belief Flipstarter will make an impact.

John Nieri (General Protocols) quotes Mike Hearn (2022):

It’s fantastic, amazing and humbling to see how the Flipstarter community is methodically making decentralized crowdfunding real.
When I started down this road with Lighthouse years ago, the Flipstarter community is what I imagined and hoped it would eventually look like.
The cryptocurrency world sadly has many projects that are hype over substance, but I believe that when the history of this time is written it’ll be the projects like Flipstarter that left the biggest long term impact.
— Mike Hearn, 2022–03 (source)

Flipstarter is a decentralized open-source crowdfunding platform utilizing Bitcoin Cash for payments (donations), with no one in control of the funds or the procedure and no one able to cancel or seize the funds.

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Who Is Mike Hearn

Mike Hearn is a legendary Bitcoin dev, one of those early enough to have worked together with Satoshi in sustaining and developing the code of the first decentralized P2P Electronic Cash network.

The contribution of Mike Hearn to Bitcoin is undeniably remarkable.

He is also the last person to exchange emails with Satoshi in April 2011, when Satoshi left Bitcoin and moved on to other things:

I've moved on to other things. It's in good hands with Gavin and everyone. 
- Satoshi Nakamoto

This is the last recorded phrase of Satoshi.

As the corporate arm of Blockstream was taking control of the Bitcoin brand between 2014–2015, Mike fought the good fight side by side with Gavin Andresen and the Bitcoin community that wanted to see Bitcoin scaling and succeeding.

Eventually, in 2016 he felt it was necessary to step down after more than five years as a lead engineer for Bitcoin, disappointed by the practices and influence of Blockstream.

What was meant to be a new, decentralised form of money that lacked “systemically important institutions” and “too big to fail” has become something even worse: a system completely controlled by just a handful of people.

Mike Hearn rightfully expressed his concerns about the miners’ acceptance of the RBF patch, which was detrimental to reducing Bitcoin’s transactional security by dismantling 0-conf acceptance. He was also in favor of increasing the blocksize together with lead developers Gavin Andresen and Jeff Garzik.

The blocksize debate was more than just a technical issue but a major one for the macroeconomic implications on the Bitcoin ecosystem:

This block size debate ultimately comes down to competing economic and system survival theories. One theory is that a free market range exists for block size, in absence of a hard limit. Another theory is that a hard limit is required to forcibly constrain the free market. Stalling on core block size changes the former to the latter — (Jeff Garzik and Gavin Andresen — source)

Mike worked for R3 between 2015–2021 on the enterprise blockchain solution Conclave (and Corda), yet, after the official release of the platform, he announced his departure from R3, remaining only as a technical advisor while also pursuing new directions.

Flipstarter

Flipstarter is the Bitcoin Cash adaptation of Lighthouse, a development Mike Hearn was working on as a decentralized alternative to Kickstarter.

The approval expressed by Mike Hearn on the volumes and activity Flipstarter presents sends the message that Bitcoin Cash is on the right track.

P2P Electronic Cash

Bitcoin scaling and the Bitcoin features Satoshi and the early community envisioned are today realized in Bitcoin Cash.

Bitcoin Cash aligns with the targets these legendary engineers were designing.

BCH is a true “ P2P Electronic Cash System”, a robust payment network capable of achieving global adoption, perhaps with certain modifications and upgrades when needed. Bitcoin Cash did not sacrifice decentralization but enhanced it instead, proving two times (with the BSV and ABC forks) no team can control the blockchain.

Several early Bitcoin developers had initially supported Bitcoin Cash, but some eventually distanced themselves from developments and stepped down.

Bitcoin Cash Needs All The Support It Can Get

The concept of P2P Electronic Cash is more meaningful than ever as new threats enhancing financial authoritarianism arise (CBDCs).

Bitcoin Cash offers utility through a secure, efficient, censorship-resistant, and reliable decentralized ecosystem.

It is high time for early Bitcoin innovators to step up to the new challenges and support the version of Bitcoin that follows Satoshi’s intentions.

We don’t have much time left as new tools of financial oppression emerge, and not many cryptocurrencies can stand against this menace.