BUIP145: (passed) Additional funding for bitcoin cash specification

[Jonathan Silverblood]

BUIP145: Additional funding for bitcoin cash specification
Submitted by: Jonathan Silverblood
Date: 2020/01/12

Summary
The purpose of this BUIP is to approve additional funding towards building a complete and independent specification for bitcoin cash.

Proposal
This BUIP proposes that we use bitcoin unlimited funds to:

• Write a formal specification for Bitcoin Cash
• Maintain a formal specification for Bitcoin Cash

Motivation
Having a proper and full documentation is beneficial to all projects that needs to interact with the Bitcoin Cash network. Particulary, having up to date, accurate and accessible documentation attracts more developer talent, encourages a more diverse ecosystem of node developments and reduces friction for those who want to build applications on top of the network.

Budget
Based on the outcome of BUIP121, a maximum expenditure cap of $10,000 per month, for a period no longer than 6 months, is proposed for the technical author work involved.

Background
While we now have a basis with https://reference.cash/ and the groundwork is done to allow for community involvement, the work needed to reach a state where the documentation becomes productive and highly valuable will still need to be done. The talent pool for people able to contribute on this level of documentation is very small. Until we reach a point where community members find significant value in this documentation, we cannot expect the them to commit to the work to keep it maintained and up-to-date, or fill in the remaining blanks.

 

[Jonathan Silverblood]

@solex this BUIP needs a number and inclusion as well.

 

[torusJKL]

With the possible split of the BCH network due to the mining tax I recommend not to add this to the coming voting round.

It would not get my vote because of the uncertainty of what Bitcoin Cash will be after May 15th.

 

[freetrader]

Well, it would get my vote for sure.

I'm for including it.

 

[solex]

@Jonathan Silverblood
Updated to 145.
Question. $60k is a substantial maximum budget. Considering that $20k was spent on the work seen in reference.cash, does that mean your assessment is that the overall work is 25% complete?

 

[Jonathan Silverblood]

> Question. $60k is a substantial maximum budget. Considering that $20k was spent on the work seen in reference.cash, does that mean your assessment is that the overall work is 25% complete?

No, I feel it is closer to 10~15% complete and the upper limit here was set on a per-month basis. I hope that the more complete it gets, the more useful and valuable it will be to the ecosystem participants and the stronger the incentive to maintain and update it will be without the need for additional funding.

The last month, I have been reading and referencing the documentation more than once every week and it's great for the things that it does cover, but the coverage so far is not enough to be relied upon.

In particular, I find the transaction structure description very useful, only the timestamp/timelock/sequence parts are difficult to grasp. The same content on, for example, the bitcoin.it wiki is much less actionable.

I hope the documentation stays developer-focused as that is what we need - enable more developer participation.

 

[solex]

Right. In which case we will proceed with it as is.