BUIP029: (closed) Vote Trevin Hofmann for Secretary

[TrevinHofmann]

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About Me

Hello! I am in my fourth and final year at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) as a software engineering student. Software has always been my primary passion. In particular, I have been most interested in open source software, applied cryptography, and Bitcoin. My résumé is available at http://trevinhofmann.com/resume.pdf.

Bitcoin & Me

I first discovered Bitcoin in early 2013 in a news article about capital controls in Cyprus. After the summer of 2013, I moved to Milwaukee to begin my software engineering degree at MSOE. During the first quarter, I was extremely fortunate to begin working remotely for Bitalo, a European Bitcoin company. With this job, I learned more about the inner workings of Bitcoin while developing a mining pool, a mobile multisignature wallet, and an escrow-based marketplace. Bitcoin is the most fascinating application of cryptography that I have found so far, and I have been passionately involved with it ever since discovering it.

Bitcoin Unlimited & Me

Bitcoin thrives on diversity and decentralization. Today, a single Bitcoin node implementation dominates the ecosystem. Given my belief that Bitcoin would benefit from a more diverse set of node implementations, I sought to contribute to an alternative to Bitcoin Core. I chose Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) due to its approach to the block size limit and other consensus rules. Rather than forcing consensus rules to its users in a top-down approach, BU puts the users in control of their own nodes' configuration. I was skeptically optimistic of BU's viability when first joining the project, but I have since become much more confident in its model of emergent consensus.

As a member of BU, I have contributed to the website's development, maintenance, and deployment. I have also created our Slack organization and maintained it with the help of Andrew Quentson (@Aquent) and others (message me for an invitation!).

Bitcoin Unlimited's Secretary

I am offering my candidacy for the role of Bitcoin Unlimited's Secretary, which has been vacant since Andrew Quentson's resignation. Andrew has been very helpful as Secretary, and I wish to continue this role with even greater involvement. Per the BU Articles of Federation, I would assist with recording and publishing BUIPs and their vote results, fostering conversation in public forums, and potentially moderating discussion by moving content when applicable.

Conclusion

Thank you very much for taking the time to consider my candidacy for Bitcoin Unlimited's Secretary role. If you have questions or comments, please reply to this post or message me directly.

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[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.

 

[TrevinHofmann]

Hey Andrew,

Thank you for the questions. I agree that it is a difficult decision. With Jerry, Peter, and myself as candidates, I am confident that Bitcoin Unlimited will have an excellent secretary regardless of this election's outcome.

The primary reason that I am running for this position is that I see it as an opportunity for me to give more to BU. I believe in the market-based principles that guide Bitcoin Unlimited. Being involved in this project is more than enough compensation for me. Over the past several months, I have been voluntarily acting as a maintainer of the website at https://www.bitcoinunlimited.info. I have worked together with many members to improve the website during this time. This includes refactoring the original work done by Andrew Quentson and yourself, updating the list of members, publishing updated research papers and BU installers, and reducing image sizes for faster loading times. Most recently, I have collaborated with Jake Smith to prepare the website for translation into other languages. I am fully prepared to continue investing time and effort into the organization.

I am a grounded individual interested in finding mutual resolutions to any conflicts with soft skills. Although I was unable to convince Andrew from resigning as secretary, you may recall the related discussion in which I took a short break from my run to act as a neutral voice of reason in the issue. A healthy organization requires open and active communication channels, and I have helped to foster discussion as the creator and a current administrator of our Slack team.

Bitcoin Unlimited is gaining in popularity, and it will require an expansion of these discussion channels. As secretary, I would work with the members to deliver improvements to our communication and processes. I agree with @freetrader that members deserve privacy when voting on certain BUIPs, and finding a solution to this problem would be one of my first priorities. A larger goal would be a system on our website for registering as a new member, adding a public key for vote signatures, proposing new BUIPs, and voting on BUIPs with automatic signature validation. An extension of this project would involve a semi-automated bounty system. Bounties created from passed BUIPs could be viewed, requested, assigned, and paid.

There is no shortage of paid work opportunities for me in the software engineering field. To me, Bitcoin Unlimited is strictly an opportunity for volunteer work. There will be no conflict limiting my efforts as secretary.

Again, I understand the difficulty in choosing a candidate. The truth is that Bitcoin Unlimited has already won the election, and I intend to continue my involvement regardless of the outcome.

 

[AdrianX]

@TrevinHofmann can you give us a summary of your activities over the last few years and your goals as BU Secretary.

Thanks, Adrian

 

[solex]

@AdrianX
It is Peter Rizun who is the current BU Secretary.

 

[AdrianX]

@solex I know, I clicked through on your advanced notice thinking there were 3 new applicants and this one used his old pitch.

I left my comment as an invitation if interested. I'm very happy with Peter's efforts, to date.