Jan3 CEO criticizes Coinbase CEO for interfering in Bitcoin technical decisions: lacks in-depth understanding, suggests Brian "fix himself first"

BlockBeats message, April 5, Jan3 CEO Samson Mow posted criticizing Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong for once again interfering with Bitcoin technical decision-making.

Samson pointed out that the issues Brian Armstrong exposed in the block size war 10 years ago still haven’t been addressed; he lacks humility and a deep understanding of the problem. Instead of first analyzing trade-offs, he sets the tone for opinions, action plans, and timelines. Coinbase’s own address reuse issues have made its wallet infrastructure vulnerable to quantum attacks, and during trading peaks it has also frequently gone down. It’s recommended that Brian “first fix himself.”

Samson believes that the threat from quantum computers has not actually materialized yet and is not expected to appear within the next 10–20 years. There’s no need to rush to switch from ECDSA/Schnorr to post-quantum signatures; instead, it should be “the later the better” to avoid greater risks.

Samson listed in detail three major downsides of a hasty post-quantum upgrade as follows: first, it could expose Bitcoin today to attacks from traditional computers; second, post-quantum signature sizes are larger by 10–125x, which would significantly reduce throughput and could trigger a “Block Size War 2.0”; third, it could become a Trojan horse, introducing RNG or cryptographic backdoors.