BUIP032: (passed) Vote Peter R for Secretary

Peter R

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2015
1,398
5,595
Dear Members,

Please accept this post as my entry into the election for Secretary of Bitcoin Unlimited.

My full name is Peter Ryan Rizun and I live in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I spend about half of my time running a technology company I co-own called Osensa Innovations Corp and the other half of my time working as a volunteer to help grow Bitcoin. Bitcoin is my passion, and I want to help shape its entrance upon the global economic stage, doing to the "exchange of money" what the Internet did to the exchange of information.

As Bitcoin Unlimited Secretary, I would continue to work towards the vision defined by Satoshi Nakamoto in his seminal white paper. Bitcoin was meant to be a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, accessible to the world's seven billion people, and I wholeheartedly commit to doing whatever is in my power to make this vision a reality.

Professionally, I am half physicist and half engineer.

I am a co-founder and a co-managing editor for Ledger, the very first peer-reviewed academic journal for cryptocurrency research, supported by a distinguished editorial board with representation from Oxford, Duke, Stanford and more.

My main research interest is developing analytical theory that explains properties and emergent phenomenon of the Bitcoin Network. I've written two papers related to Bitcoin that received significant interest, “A Transaction Fee Market Exists Without A Block Size Limit” and “Reduce Orphaning Risk and Improve Zero Confirmation Security With Subchains”, and gave a talk on block space as an economic commodity at the Scaling Bitcoin conference in Montreal. I also wrote a 5-part article series called "Towards Massive On-Chain Scaling: Block Propagation Results With Xthin," that received over 20,000 views, to present our results after the BU core team measured block propagation times for over 8,000 blocks.

I'm also a "hardware junky," and in the fall of 2014 I built several prototypes of "Sigsafe: a NFC key tag for signing Bitcoin transactions." One of these devices made the world's first Bitcoin transaction signed off-line over an air gap and then communicated to the network in real time.

I was the recipient of the $105,000 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) CGS Doctoral Award and was recognized as a “Leader of Tomorrow” by the Alberta Science and Technology Foundation (ASTech). I hold a B.A.Sc. degree in Engineering Physics from the University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. in Medical Physics from the University of Calgary.

Outside of Bitcoin, I'm a hard-core foodie, drink far too much wine for my own good, and love hiking and swimming. I hope that you consider voting for me in the upcoming election for Bitcoin Unlimited Secretary.

Sincerely,
Peter R. Rizun
 
Last edited:

theZerg

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 28, 2015
1,012
2,327
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.
 

Peter R

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2015
1,398
5,595
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?

I volunteer approximately 30 hours per week to Bitcoin activities. To allow me to spend more time on Bitcoin Unlimited, I intend to raise funding to hire a part-time editor for Ledger Journal, freeing up an additional 10 hours per week of my time.

I intend to delegate basic website maintenance to a qualified individual--possibly Trevin Hoffman--and issue a BUIP so that he can be paid a reasonable hourly rate for maintenance tasks.

I have the time and energy to perform the duties of BU Secretary as defined in the articles, including website efforts, checking BUIPs for adherence to our guidelines, and counting and reporting on BUIP votes. I recognize that dealing with "soft" problems requires commitment and time and I am prepared for that.

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

Yes. After implementing the updates proposed by solex and digitsu in BUIP030, I would then like to
  • streamline our voting process, and
  • allow for anonymous voting using traceable ring signatures.
I envision using a simple webpage to achieve this, with a back end that allows new BUIPs to be easily added, signatures collected and votes automatically tabulated.



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?


I am not interested in physically doing the webwork required to implement these changes. I would like to organize for others to do the work, and I will oversee and manage that process.
 
Last edited:

AdrianX

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2015
2,097
5,797
bitco.in
Yes. After implementing the updates proposed by solex and digitsu in BUIP030, I would then like to
  • streamline our voting process, and
  • allow for anonymous voting using traceable ring signatures.
GUI looks and sounds great, you're going to have to describe this in terms that average Joe can understand. This gets to the heart of our problem with democracy today as presented by James D'Angelo
get this process trust worthy and we'll be on the road to solving very big problems.
 
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digitsu

Member
Jan 5, 2016
63
149
I still think using counterparty tokens is a much more transparent and trustless system vs a home written solution. Especially when you want or need the users to feel like they don't need to trust us to run a fair election. It also show cases one of the few good (non money) uses of the bitcoin blockchain.