BUIP035: (passed) New Bitcoin Unlimited Website

[Peter R]

BUIP035: New Bitcoin Unlimited Website

1. Project Title

New Bitcoin Unlimited Website

2. Bitcoin Address

TBA

3. Motivation

The current Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) website has now served its purpose. At the time it was created, BU was relatively unknown and the website helped communicate to enthusiasts that (1) BU adheres to Satoshi's vision for a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, and (2) that its members believe that Bitcoin should evolve through a bottom-up market-based process, rather than by following top-down diktats from technocrats. With BU's soaring popularity and growing acceptance, it is now time for a new website targeted at a broader audience, with a neutral and informational look and feel.

4. Objectives

The objective of this project is to build a new Bitcoin Unlimited website that targets three groups: new users, full-node operators, and miners. The website will visually explain BU’s central technologies, have multi-language support, show real-time network statistics on the emergent block size limit, include an automated BUIP voting system, and be easier to maintain.

[Link to full mock-up]

5. Project Duration

Phase 1: November - December 2016

Phase 2: January - February 2017

Phase 3: March - April 2017

6. Project Team

The work will be completed by a joint effort between Bitcoin Unlimited members and outside paid web developers. The BU members involved include thezerg, solex, Peter R, digitsu, Trevin Hofmann, sickpig and Jake Smith. These members will be responsible for keeping the project on schedule, hiring outside web developers when appropriate, and generating content.

7. Summary of Work Completed to Date

Last winter, Andrew Stone (thezerg) created the first Bitcoin Unlimited website in Meteor. Trevin Hofmann and Andrew Quentson later re-skinned the website and added additional content, using the Express JS (Node JS) platform. The website source code is presently hosted on GitHub and is maintained by various members of the BU team, Trevin Hofmann in particular.

8. Description of Activities

A mock-up of the proposed website can be found by following this link. Please refer to this mock-up in order to understand the work plan described below.

PHASE 1

Generate missing content (112 hr)

• Write “solutions” blurbs for users, node operators, miners (8 hr)
• Prepare tech explainers for emergent consensus, Xthin, parallel validation, traffic shaping, with diagrams/animations as required (56 hr)
• Sort out content for download page (16 hr)
• Revise and expand FAQ; organize by visitor category (16 hr)
• Write brief blurb on BU, collect bios, headshots, pub-keys, etc (16 hr)

Skin website (100 hr)

• Make the site look similar to what’s shown in the mock-up and function as expected
• Iterate design until fonts, colors, spacing, image sizes, menus look awesome

Create page to dynamically build the “emergent block size limit” charts (40 hr)

• Pull data from bitnodes API

Prototype a content-management system (40 hr)

• So that maintainers can login and post “Recent News” items

PHASE 2

Add international support

• Translate content and graphics to Chinese
• Translate content and graphics to any other desired languages (depends on volunteers)
• Get language-select drop-down menu working

Expand “login” functionality on member’s page

• Members also can login and edit their profiles
• Maintainers can easily post new software releases

PHASE 3

Build automated voting / BUIP management system

• BUIPs can be submitted for voting using a simple form
• Members can easily produce digital signatures and submit their votes (e.g., using client-side javascript)
• System automatically checks signatures and determines if BUIP passes or fails.
• List of passed BUIPs maintained on website

9. Anticipated Challenges and Uncertainties

Most of the work is routine website development, with the exception of the real-time network statistics graphs and the automated BUIP voting system.

To build the real-time graphs for the emerging consensus on block size limit for distribution by nodes, we intend to use the “bitnodes” API call: https://bitnodes.21.co/api/v1/snapshots/latest/. How we build the equivalent graph for distribution by hash power is not yet clear, but Andrew Stone has confirmed that the raw data required for the second graph can be polled directly from a BU full node.

To build the automated BUIP voting system, we intend to use BitPay’s Bitcore Javascript libraries for signing vote messages client side. Beyond this, the overall design of the automated voting system is not yet defined. To de-risk this, Phase III will not commence until a reasonable plan has been approved by the project team.

The other significant challenge is completing the project on schedule, as the work plan relies on the contribution of volunteers occurring at a timely pace. To remove some of this risk, we are asking for funds to allow some of the “tedious” work to be off-loaded to paid developers.

10. Budget

The budget for the project is $30,000, broken down roughly as $15k for Phase 1, $5k for Phase 2 and $10k for Phase 3. The BU members of the project team will administer these funds using their discretion. Funds will be used both to pay outside developers and to pay members for content creation.

11. Impact

By targeting three types of visitors (new users, node operators, and miners), website visitors will more quickly find the information they need to make them confident running or supporting Bitcoin Unlimited. New users will quickly find information the tells them what Bitcoin Unlimited is and how it supports scaling, using simple visual explanations. For existing node operators, the site will make it clear that Bitcoin Unlimited both makes their voice heard and gives them the best technology (e.g., Xthin and Parallel Validation) for keeping up with the growing blockchain. Miners will find information that explains why Bitcoin Unlimited is a safe and efficient way to end the block size limit debate and move forward with on-chain scaling.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

As an "outsider" my humble opinion:
- Looks good overall
- sans-serif font looks very ugly
- I'd put the language selection, donate button + links to github, twitter, whatever on the lower part of the page, similar to this forum
- an orange similar to the orange used here might be better than the "redish" orange used now

(apparently I like the design of this forum )

To build the real-time graphs for the emerging consensus on block size limit for distribution by nodes, we intend to use the “bitnodes” API call: https://bitnodes.21.co/api/v1/snapshots/latest/. How we build the equivalent graph for distribution by hash power is not yet clear, but Andrew Stone has confirmed that the raw data required for the second graph can be polled directly from a BU full node.

That's a pretty cool idea!

 

[Peter R]

" Looks good overall"

Thanks!

"sans-serif font looks very ugly"

That font is Avenir. I'm certainly not married to it, but I wanted something that looked more modern than the standard Arial/Helvetica.

"I'd put the language selection, donate button + links to github, twitter, whatever on the lower part of the page, similar to this forum"

Interesting idea.

"an orange similar to the orange used here might be better than the "redish" orange used now"

The rationale behind the "redish" orange was to follow @Graphics lead when he made the bottom of the "B" in the BU logo fade to a deeper red. I thought this deeper redish orange might come across as a modern take on the classic Bitcoin orange, while still being recognizable as a "Bitcoin color." Anyways, the orange can certainly be less red if that's what people want.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

That font is Avenir. I'm certainly not married to it, but I wanted something that looked more modern than the standard Arial/Helvetica.

Hm. I find texts in sans-serif typefaces hard to read. Ok for headlines, but absolutely not for texts imo.

About the orange: No idea, what people want. I find the orange on this forum to be more "calm".

 

[VeritasSapere]

I also agree that the orange on this forum would be a better color for the new Bitcoin Unlimited website. That is just my humble and rather uninformed opinion here, I am certainly not a "marketing guy", I tend to be more focused on the theory.

 

[adamstgbit]

i think you could cut some corners of the website itself and invest some of the budget trowd a sharp looking "What is Bitcoin Unlimited" 3 min video.

 

[Peter R]

"i think you could cut some corners of the website itself and invest some of the budget trowd a sharp looking "What is Bitcoin Unlimited" 3 min video."

I think a lot of people agree with you that a 2-D motion graphics explainer video would be useful. Hopefully we can look into this after we get the ball rolling on the website. There is enough money--especially given the increase in the bitcoin price--to do both.

 

[flipperfish]

I don't know how finished the design is or how much effort went into it, but the background image behind "Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer ..." makes the text more or less unreadable and distracts too much from the message.

The description in the OP creates the impression, that you want to create a new content management system from scratch. I think this decision needs to be carefully considrered.

 

[jbreher]

ACK

While I'd rather not second guess the ones doing the work, I also don't care for the font. Does it need to be uglier to be more modern? While it may mark me as antediluvian, I might point out that cognitive scientists hath shewn* that serif fonts are easier read than sans. ::sigh:: I know it looks dated.

* see what I did there? Of course you did.

I thought the same about the CMS as did flipperfish. Though with the low amount of hours allocated, it looks like it must be reuse of some existing system.

 

[Peter R]

Thanks for the feedback, @flipperfish, @jbreher

Here's a mix of of serifed and sans fonts that IMO looks good:

Regarding the CMS, we were not planning to develop our own, but rather to use an existing one.

 

[AdrianX]

quick question?

what's the difference between Solutions: For Node Operators and For Users?

 

[Peter R]

@AdrianX:

We want to target existing node operators who might be running Core but thinking of switching to Unlimited to support on-chain scaling. So we want to give them more technical information specific to running a node and show them how BU is the right decision. For example, existing node operators care about how Xthin allows them to more easily keep up with bigger blocks, or how traffic shaping allows them to control their node's bandwidth usage.

But we also want to provide useful information to people new to Bitcoin that may not ever run a node but are still interested in what this "Bitcoin Unlimited" thing is all about. We don't want to overload these people by talking about Bloom filters, block propagation and Inv messages. Perhaps "solutions" is the wrong word in this case, but basically the idea is to tell them a bit about what BU is, how it helps form the backbone of the bitcoin network, powers SPV wallets that they might be using, etc. We want these visitors to leave with a basic understanding of what BU is (e.g., that it's NOT an altcoin) and ideally that they sympathize with what we're trying to do.

 

[adamstgbit]

"Bitcoin is the world's first ................................................ Bitcoin Unlimited software helps power the backbone of the Bitcoin Network"

IDK, i think anyone that lands on this page will know about bitcoin already and would rather know more about BU then the fact that "bitcoin is the world's first....."

basically i think i'd want to see 2 points said there.
1) BU have implemented real solutions that are in use today
2) BU is focused on developing what the network itself wants

i'd suggest this.

" The Bitcoin Unlimited team has developed many new scaling solutions in use today, including, Xthin, BLOOMFILTERS?, ANDTHATOTHERTHING??, which improves bitcoin's overall scalability. The Bitcoin Unlimited client allows full-nodes to keep up with future network scaling without requiring heavy duty hardware. We are focused on developing solutions demanded by the network and that why Bitcoin Unlimited offers node operator an easy way to communicate their preferences for future BIPs, through Emergent consensus. "

Or whatever, somehow get rid of "bitcoin is the world's first.....".

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Sure, I support this BUIP and look forward for a new website.

I can help with texts - explanatory and editing ...

 

[Inca]

I support this BUIP. It is time for a more professional point of contact for new users.

 

[awemany]

Hey, given that I have done some (preliminary) work on BUIP voting, I would be interested in the voting platform part (phase 3). Whom should I contact for that, or is someone else working on this already? What are the libraries / is the platform used? Must it be JS, or could it be a JS part calling external programs (such as a extended/updated/tailored variant of my software)?

 

[Peter R]

@awemany: As far as I know, no one has expressed an interest in doing that part yet. We have up to ~$10,000 to fund this component (including integration with the rest of the site). Ideally I'd like to find someone who wants to "own it" and make sure it gets done and gets done well.

The best place to discuss the website in on BU Slack in the #website channel. I don't think anything has been done yet concerning the BUIP management system, so the design is pretty flexible at this point. I think it's also pretty "stand alone" with the exception of the Content Management System (which is also undefined right now). Basically, we want a way we can login to the website to easily post new "Latest News" items or the latest release of the software, and ideally this same backend can also be used to post BUIPs and automate the checking of the signatures and determining if the vote passes.

We're using ExpressJS (NodeJS) but you'd have to ask @TrevinHofmann if there are specific requirements regarding external programs that are being called.

I mentioned "client-side javascript" in the proposal because I think for security reason we need the signature to be computed client side. That way, someone could even save the "voting_page.html" to a USB drive, produce the signature offline, and then just paste the signature back into their browser and hit "upload to Bitcoin Unlimited." Here's a sample form I made (don't worry about the ring-signature part--that's a project for 2018 ):

Also check out this website I commissioned for signing documents:

http://www.ledgerjournal.org/ojs/public/journals/1/simplesign.html

It uses BitPay's BitCore Java Library. Basically, the client-side java script page doesn't really need t do much more than this page already does. There would be a button to upload the signature and then the backend would check it and update the real-time voting results.