I can agree with @Murch on one point, we’re lacking reviewers experts on Bitcoin Core. Especially in the most sensible subsystems and working on the long-term interesting problems.

I’ll take the allegations of being a maniac (cf. wiktionary) as a compliment. This is true you have to be obsessed by a wide variety of topics (cryptography, math, networking, distributed systems) if you wish to be a high-performant security researcher or reviewers in the ream of Bitcoin Core.

And additionally, you have to be for sure a little be paranoid. Only the paranoid survive. the title of a great book by Andy Grove, former Intel CEO on crisis and inflection points management.

In my opinion, there is certainly a threshold of internal complacency or laziness where some patchset changes in Bitcoin Core becomes a backdoor of their own. Especially when the PR authors and reviewers are refusing to engage in a technical conversation on the flaws of said patchet changes.

On idea discussions among few colleagues, I cannot remember there were permissioned communication channels to discuss Taproot changes e.g True, there was a low-noise IRC channel where the changes were discussed, though “anyone” was able to join in knowledge of the IRC channel. In my regards, such Delving Bitcoin WG constitutes a “permissioned channel” as a) you might not be aware of the existence until disclosure and b) you have to ask permission to a moderator to join.

I stay at Murch’s availability if he wish to discuss on the topics where we’re diverging during a public podcast, with a neutral host, in a constructive and patient fashion. Taking time to listen to each other viewpoints.

All that said - Thanks Murch for your work on Bitcoin Core.