BUIP028: (closed) Candidacy for Secretary role - digitsu

[digitsu]

Hi fellow members,



I know that my userid here may indicate that I'm a 'new member' but I've been in crypto since I bought my first bitcoins in 2013. I have largely been a holder and steered clear from getting involved in the community until the XT project split off in early 2015. It was then that I felt that market pressures have worked to centralize the Bitcoin development roadmap and that the Bitcoin that I believed in might not achieve its full potential without everyday folks like us with a day-job taking more of an active role in the community.



My background is engineering, and have worked most of my professional career in financial technology in Wall Street banks. Not unlike Bitcoin, the software that financial institutions run on their trading floors are responsible for moving billions of dollars of risk a day, and you can imagine it can be a pretty high stress environment, but tends to hone one's critical thinking. I am very thankful for the lessons I learned while working "in the system".



I got interested in Bitcoin thanks to its economic implications, and its potential to revolutionize what is the conventional thinking in monetary theory. I maintain a blog that talks mostly on these topics at http://WallStreetTechnologist.com



I was one of the earlier members (#41) though I haven't spent much time in the forums as much, spending more time on slack channels (Classic and BU) and twitter (@digitsu) instead. I am an organizer for the http://OnChainScaling.com virtual conferences, and I look forward to being able to contribute more to the community on an interactive basis.



I firmly believe in a decentralized Bitcoin, which means that there should be power balances and fair choices that every user is free to make as an individual. Not just the illusion of free choice -- like choosing between 3 state-produced brands of soap in the former USSR. One of these choices is the nature of Bitcoin itself, and whether it should prioritize growth and market penetration vs conservative protectionism. I believe that Bitcoin is an experiment in money, and thus should aim to be the best in this regard. Money is a collective delusion, and its value is only dependant on the number of people valuing it over something else. Therefore, it is a network effect.



Bitcoin's value, is therefore its network effect. To grow its value is to grow the network.



The effort to grow and foster this network effect is analogous to growing its value, or market price. This can be accomplished by either making the existing market value(or appraise) the asset more than before, or by growing the size of the market itself. I believe that we have exhausted the limits of the former, and it is time to focus on the latter strategy.



It is in these tumultuous but exciting times that I officially submit my application for the role of Secretary. I hope to be able to serve and honor the spirit of Satoshi's Bitcoin. I hope you will support me in this endeavour.


Jerry Chan (digitsu)
Thank you.

 

[theZerg]

Great! Thanks for running!

What do you envision for the future of BU?

What specific things are you interested in doing as secretary?

 

[digitsu]

Well, I would like BU to continue to push the capabilities of Bitcoin with focus on features that help the network scale safely OnChain as much as possible. Also I believe that as block size is an economic control (the size of the blocks determines the available supply of the resource of block space) I believe that this is a value that should be determined by the market, and not developers at the protocol level. I think the notion that each node operator can set their own acceptance thresholds and rules will make for a system that can scale naturally itself. Thus BU is the most free-market driven solution to this particular scaling obstacle.

I also support initiatives which improve the P2P layer of the network in a decentralized way. There will always be solutions which are more efficient for cartels which seek to gain advantages in a P2P network, (such as relay network or FIBRE) which is fine. But there should also be a pure P2P solution for those who would not mind sacrificing a bit of efficiency to help to contribute to the resiliency of the network as a whole. Centralized solutions may make sense with the current miner distribution/makeup, but this isn't guaranteed to be the case forever, what a bitcoin miner looks like today may be completely different from what a miner looks like 50 years from now.

I don't think there should be one solution that fits all. It is a mosaic of solutions all working in tandem which is what makes Bitcoin decentralized, and what makes it strong in the long run. At the end of it, freedom to innovate, is how software evolves. And it is evolution that will win in the end.

As Secretary, I will strive to help disseminate these ideas, to foster and grow the community of skeptical and analytical thinkers and developers, and to encourage BU and Bitcoin in general to continue to evolve.

(and I guess I'll also have to take minutes at all meetings and count votes on BUIPs)

 

[HelloGuy]

@digitsu If Gregory Maxwell starts to insult and threaten you, will you be afraid of?

 

[digitsu]

haha, not at all. I'm one of his toughest critics, and have openly debated with Adam Back, Luke, Matt and Greg in the past. (just scan through reddit for my posts). I have toned down recently, as others have taken the mantle of being the voice of skepticism and doing a much better job of it.

 

[bitsko]

Im just an onlooker here but I from what Ive seen digitsu is awesome and worth having involved.

 

[freetrader]

@digitsu : Since this is such a critical role, can you give us some information on what you currently do outside of Bitcoin (you mentioned "day job").

 

[theZerg]

This is a really hard choice, as all candidates are qualified and have made great contributions to Bitcoin Unlimited and/or the Onchain scaling effort. I am asking candidates these same questions:

The formal duties of Secretary is unpaid by Bitcoin Unlimited. Do you have the skills, time, and energy for basic web site maintenance & for solving "soft" problems like resolving issues that come up with forum operators, etc as an unpaid service to the group?

Do you have the time and the interest to envision and propose larger budgeted improvements to our member management, voting, and BUIP posting process?

Due to potential conflicts of interest, its to some degree easier -- or cleaner anyway -- for us to pay someone who is NOT the secretary to implement the larger process improvements I'm describing above. Would you consider that role to be a good or even better fit for your current situation than that of secretary?

Finally, if you are not voted secretary, I hope that you will understand how difficult this decision is to make, how it doesn't reflect my appreciation of your contributions (different for both of you but both extremely valuable) and hope you will continue to contribute your time and advocacy, especially now that we have the budget to compensate you for it.

 

[digitsu]

I realize as the vote is already ON, its a bit late for me to post this, but as I was about to cast my vote, I realized that one of the biggest flaws with BU governance processes is the voting system itself. Currently votes are publicly readable, hard (and labouriously manual) to verify and a bit clunky being done through a forum interface. People who don't use Armory wallet like myself already know how unwieldy it is to try to format the message to be signed and the signatures so that people reading the forum can verify this. It is so cumbersome and error prone (extra newline chars added by the browser may invalidate the sig), that I'd be willing to bet nobody has bothered to try to verify any votes to date.

I would make it my project to fix the voting process so that it can be done seamlessly, anonymously and automatically verified and results being counted in real time as part of BU site. I propose using Counterparty for this (or some similar token tech) as it is currently already being done elsewhere https://blockscan.com/vote/XCPELECTION2016 and thus very little extra work would need to be done, and also the fact that it is a 3rd party system eliminates any trust issues members may have with BU site administrators themselves being able to affect the administration of a vote. Tokens would be issued for each BUIP up for voting, and issued to each member. Voting would mean sending your 'vote' to the address of the outcome you wish (one address for 'yes', another for 'no').

I'm also open to other implementations of anonymous voting (some have suggested using ring signatures) being developed exclusively for BU use, though as the token solution is something that is already done we can likely have a solution in the least amount of time with the least amount of resources spent to develop it. (if any)
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@digitsu : Since this is such a critical role, can you give us some information on what you currently do outside of Bitcoin (you mentioned "day job").

I work on several part time Bitcoin projects. One is satoricoin.jp a physical bitcoin sold in Japan though my responsibilities there are mostly tech consultancy, and in another project i'm helping setup a digital goods ecommerce site that accepts only Bitcoins & tokens as payment.

Truth be told I haven't had a steady paycheck since I left wall street in 2014, and I'm just doing what I can to promote bitcoin, do a bit of hacking both in software (mostly in python, though messing with javascript of late and dabbling with node.js) and raspberry pi's. I love working on prototyping crypto projects and building crypto solutions. So, to answer your q @freetrader, I have no 'day job'

My expertise is in python, slang, and a C++ (a long time ago)