The Peter Todd grant rejection drama misses the actual signal: OpenSats isn't gatekeeping Bitcoin development—it's revealing that voluntary contribution models break down under monetary pressure. When grant money enters open source, contributors inevitably sort into funded and unfunded camps, creating hierarchy where none existed before.

This same dynamic is playing out across AI development, where research labs are discovering that throwing compute resources at problems creates dependencies, not breakthroughs. The real constraint isn't funding or hardware—it's that both Bitcoin and AI progress require adversarial conditions that institutional backing systematically eliminates.

The most important work happens in the margins, funded by obsession rather than committees. Grant committees optimize for legible progress; breakthrough technologies optimize for survival under attack.