Who is Gavin Andresen?

The name of Gavin Andresen is one of the most recognizable names in the crypto world. He was one of the developers who brought Bitcoin to life as we know it today. So great and recognized was his contribution at that time that he became Satoshi Nakamoto's right-hand man and came to be called "the man who built Bitcoin."

Lto life of Gavin Andresen started in the city of Melbourne, Australia the year 1966. Its original name is Gavin bell. At the young age of 5, her family moved to the United States, specifically the city of Seattle, Washington. Later he would move to the city of Anchorage, Alaska and finally to him Santa Ynez Valley, California.

During his childhood, Andresen showed a great interest in the world of computing. An interest that would be materialized when obtaining the Princeton University Computer Science degree in 1988. At the time, he was 22 years old and his career would lead him to excel in his work.

Early career

After graduating from Princeton, Gavin Andresen began his job as an engineer at the renowned company Silicon Graphics Computer Systems (SGI). In this company, Andresen was part of the 3D graphics systems development team. His work focused on the development of the tools VRML y Open Inventor. Both were part of the extensive software library of SGI for the development of 3D systems, which Andresen helped develop. However, after eight years of work at SGI, Andresen decided to resign from the company. It was 1996 and the revolution of the dot com was in its infancy.

In 1996 Andresen decided to start his own venture. This is how he founded his company Wasabi Software and from there created the software SkyPaint. This software compiled all the experience gained from SGI, to shape a tool for painting and editing 3D surround panoramas. At the same time, Andresen rewritten the entire specification of VRML to give rise to VRML 2.0, which improved its specifications.

Later in 1997, Andresen alongside Daniel J. Woods, Alan Norton presented his publication Wired for Speed: Efficient Routes in VRML 2.0. In it, it was explained how VRML could transform the development of 3D environments through computers.

Among other developments in which Andresen participated, is the development of technologies VOIP for Hear Me in 2001. He also developed online games for blind and sighted people in All in Play of which he was part until 2005.

He also participated in the development of Prosper, a loan management tool until 2005. Helped develop a CMS en Gravity Switch until 2007. Additionally he worked in the University of Massachusetts Amherst Information Extraction and Synthesis Laboratory.

His work in the development of Bitcoin

In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto made history with the live launch of his invention, the Bitcoin. However, Andresen would not listen to it until May 2010 thanks to an article by published by InfoWorld. Gavin Andresen quickly became interested in the project and made a purchase of 10.000 bitcoins for the sum of $ 50 USD.

This first approach meant a great experience for Andresen. Convinced by the potential of technology, he immediately set to work to unleash his first development. This work gave rise to what would be the first Bitcoin faucet in the history of the crypto world.

Un faucet o source, is a website that gives a certain amount of bitcoin to those who visit it under certain conditions. The objective of these is to give bitcoins to people so that they can use them and test the potential of said technology. Andresen's faucet initially awarded five bitcoins (5 BTC) to those who visited him. That would be more than $ 50.000 USD at the current market price. This development remained active until 2012. Another development of Andresen at that time was ClearCoin. This was a bitcoin exchange service through a guaranteed deposit system.

But all this experience also led Andresen to develop code directly for the infrastructure of the Bitcoin Core, the brain of Bitcoin. Back then, Satoshi Nakamoto was in charge of development and Andresen worked closely with him. Andresen and Nakamoto's communications through emails and forums were intense and They were rapidly driving the overall development of Bitcoin. This quickly made Andresen one of the most veteran developers regarding Bitcoin. This situation would later be recognized by Nakamoto in a unique way.

Satoshi disappears, Andresen at the helm of Bitcoin

In December 2010, Nakamoto surprisingly published what would be his final message in the forum BitcoinTalk. As quickly as it appeared, the genius behind the creation of blockchain and Bitcoin technology disappeared.

The surprise behind this announcement would come a week later. The December 19th 2010Andresen Opened a thread in BitcoinTalk in which he commented the following:

With Satoshi's blessing, and with great reluctance, I will begin to do more active project management for Bitcoin. Everyone please be patient with me; I've had a lot of project management experience at startups, but this is the first open source project of any size I've been involved in.

With that ad Gavin Andresen was telling the world that Bitcoin and everything the development of it was in your hands. Gone was the fuzzy image of Nakamoto who was now disappearing from the Bitcoin development world to dedicate himself to "other things". In Nakamoto's view, Andresen was the right person to complete the development of Bitcoin, they were "good hands".

Bitcoin redesign and the birth of Bitcoin Core

When Andresen received the development of Bitcoin this was hardly a group of hardly articulated ideas. While the technology base worked, there were many rough edges to polish and weak points to fix. Andresen's work initially focused on addressing the biggest design flaws and building a solid design infrastructure.

In the first months of work, the work of Andresen focused on rewriting and improving many parts of the original Bitcoin software. Back then, development fell into the hands of only five developers. The work paid off and redundant sections, bugs and security issues were eliminated. After several months of redesign, not even a third of the original Nakamoto code remained. Finally the result of that work was renamed as Bitcoin Core, to differentiate it from Bitcoin and the global meaning it had.

For this reason it is not uncommon to speak of Gavin Andresen as "The man who built Bitcoin". This, then, was his work that finally laid the foundations for this cryptocurrency and allowed technology to evolve.

Even during the development of Bitcoin Core, Andresen was the first person to speak about Bitcoin for the United States government. This was done in the most striking way possible, a technology conference led by the CIA.

The Bitcoin Foundation

Parallel to the development of Bitcoin Core, Andresen presented to the community the idea of ​​creating the Bitcoin Foundation. The idea behind the foundation was to allow the development of strategies that will take full advantage of Bitcoin's capabilities. With that in mind, Andresen proposed the formation of this non-profit organization, to serve as a centralized entity that would interact with the legal system regarding issues such as trademark and domain control bitcoin.org.

Furthermore, the Bitcoin Foundation would act as a library to obtain accurate information about the project. Among other functions, it would serve to maintain the economy necessary for the development of Bitcoin.

By September 2012, the Bitcoin Foundation was already a reality. In its beginnings, Gavin Andresen was appointed as chief scientist, Roger Ver, Charlie Shrem, Peter Vessenes, Mark Karpeles y patrick murck as original members.

However, the idyll of the Bitcoin Foundation was quickly spotted. Charlie shem who in 2014 held the position of Vice President of the Foundation, was embroiled in a money laundering scandal and the scandal of SilkRoad. That same year too, the exchange scandal exploded Mt. Gox, which affected Mark Karpeles.

Your distancing from the project

Gavin Andresen's estrangement from the project began after wanting take development actions that other members did not receive in a good way. The development “Fast and stormy” de Andresen led to discussions about whether his decisions were best for the project.

One of those decisions was related to the fact of increase bitcoin's block size. This measure would serve to improve the scalability of Bitcoin, which was beginning to be limited by the growth of the network. Internal conflicts led Andresen to gradually move away from the development of Bitcoin and delegate its functions. Wladimir van der Laan It was he who made most of the decisions within development at this point. In the words of Van der Laan, Andresen "Not only was I not writing code, but I wasn't discussing development on IRC or GitHub, or reviewing the code."

The situation was accentuated to the point that Andresen presented on his own account the well-known BIP-101. This BIP It was intended to lay the groundwork for increasing the size of the Bitcoin block, but the community rejected the change. Faced with a situation of compromised trust, Andresen decided to leave the project management. His successor would be Van der Laan who had already been doing this for some time.

Since then, Andresen's work within Bitcoin has been aimed at improving its capabilities. In 2016, he presented his study An Analysis of Attacks on Blockchain Consensus. That same year, he would be in the midst of controversy by declaring that Craig Wright he was really the person behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. However, he would quickly retract this as Wright never showed him proof of this claim. Currently, he is actively working on Graphene, a protocol for the propagation of information by nodes. Bitcoin.