BUIP153: BU Blockparty - Let's Get Building On Bitcoin Cash!

[singularity]

BUIP153: BU Blockparty - Let's Get Building On Bitcoin Cash!
Submitted: 31 August 2020
Updated: 7 September 2020
by singularity

Motivation
Let's Get Building On Bitcoin Cash! After a hard couple of years for BCH and our ecosystem, it seems that the clouds are starting to part and there is energy starting to bubble up. I think this is the perfect time to use this momentum and accelerate it further. One of BU’s most prominent roles in the BCH ecosystem has been in bringing in and supporting new developers.

BU has hosted a number of high-quality conferences, including the various Satoshi’s Vision conferences, and scaling conferences. It now seems like a good time to put these skills and experience to use in pulling developers back into the BCH ecosystem.

The Event
BU Blockparty will be an online BCH hackathon lasting one week in December (Date TBA). There will be a large prize pool and anyone who wants to develop a product, service or tool on BItcoin Cash will be welcome to participate. Teams need not be made up of just developers. Teams will almost certainly gain value from having business people, graphic designers, project managers, marketers etc.

At least four prizes (paid out in BCH) will be available:

• $9,000 top prize
• $2,000 Category A prize
• $2,000 Category B prize
• $2,000 Category C prize

The hackathon will be publicized through social media, articles on read.cash, and pre-recorded and live-streamed video content to be published to the Bitcoin Unlimited youtube channel. Content will include:

• Interviews with each team during the hackathon.
• Presentations by each team to explain what they are building.
• Presentations by each to showcase what they have built.
• Awards ceremony.

We will be asking highly talented members of the BCH development community to provide some input and direction to teams that enter the hackathon.

The Rules

• The product, service or tool must be developed from scratch during the hackathon.
• Teams can have from 1-5 members.
• Projects will be judged on a number of factors.
• Teams will be required to write a long form article (to be released before the hackathon starts) detailing what they are building.
• Teams will be asked to write a long form article after the hackathon is finished giving their thoughts on their experience during the hackathon.
• Teams will be required to create a video presenting their hackathon idea for release at the beginning of the hackathon.
• Each teams will be given a public channel within the Bitcoin Unlimited slack and this is to be used for discussion during the hackathon.

Objectives & Key results
Get more engagement from existing developers within the BCH ecosystem

• Have at least 10 teams attend the hackathon who are made up of existing BCH developers.
• Get each team to generate three pieces of quality content (before, during and after) the hackathon.

Bring new developers into the BCH ecosystem

• Have at least 10 teams made up of developers who are new to BCH.
• Collect email addresses of 100 developers interested in building on BCH.
• Get each team to generate three pieces of quality content (before, during and after) the hackathon.
• Work with some of the best

Highlight Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Unlimited within the wider cryptocurrency space

• Establish at least three partnerships to help promote the hackathon.
• Generate at least 100,000 CTR’s to the hackathon website.
• Generate at least 10,000 CTR’s to other BCH developer info sites, for example bch.info

Maximise the prize pool

• At least double the prize pool through sponsorships and flipstarter.
• Find at least 3 co-sponsors for the hackathon.

A long-term high-level goal for this event is to establish it as a valuable asset to BU and the BCH ecosystem. If the initial event goes well then we can look towards hosting other similar events in the future under the same brand, and possibly expand into in-person events similar to the previous Satoshi’s Vision Conferences (when this is possible to happen in a safe manner). This also means that all the work done on developing the assets for this first event will be useful for any further events in the future, reducing their overhead.

Deliverables

• Branded graphic assets.
  • Official event logo provided in all required formats.
  • Graphic designs for use on social media.
  • Graphics for ads.
• Branded video assets.
  • Video intro animation.
  • Video lower thirds toolkit.
  • Video outro animation.
  • Livestream waiting animation.
• Video content.
  • 3 items of video content generated by each team hosted on the BU youtube channel.
  • 8 hours of interview/livestream content hosted on the BU youtube channel.
• Written content.
  • 3 articles generated by each team.
  • 1 article announcing the event.
  • 1 article announcing the judges of the event.
  • 1 article announcing the teams entering the event and their projects.
  • 1 article summarising the progress being made by each team.
  • 1 article summarising the final entries of each team.
  • 1 article announcing the winners of the event.
  • 1 article as a wrap up and request for feedback on the event.
• Social accounts.
  • Official BU Blockparty Telegram group.
  • Official BU Blockparty Twitter account.

All rights to the branding and content generated by the event will be retained by Bitcoin Unlimited. An exception to this is the content generated by the teams, where they will retain the rights to this content, but BU will have the right to publish this content on its channels. The articles will be published to the official BU read.cash page and the most important articles will be published to the official BU blog on bitcoinunlimited.info.blog. Video content will be published to the official BU youtube channel.

Time & Funding Budget
This BUIP requests a total of $32,000 in funding for this event from Bitcoin Unlimited. The breakdown of how this funding will be spent is as follows.

$10,000 = Administration including: organisation, hosting, support, video hosting.
$2,000 = Branding package including graphics and video packages.
$2,000 = Ads
$2,000 = Hackathon website
$1,000 = Buffer for extra costs
$15,000 = Prize pool
$32,000 = TOTAL

Expenses will be billed as they occur. The elected BU officials: President, Secretary and Developer will jointly agree expenditures for this event.

The following is a rough breakdown of the time budget required for the various types of work required to successfully execute this event.

60 hours = Team support before, during and after the hackathon.
40 hours = Web development
20 hours = Partnership marketing.
25 hours = Branding graphics including: logo, social media gfx, website gfx, and ad gfx.
25 hours = Video motion graphics branding including: video intro, video outro, lower thirds.
15 hours = Finding and working with other sponsors.
10 hours = Ad management.
10 hours = Livestream prep and hosting.
15 hours = Video content management.
10 hours = Website content management.
5 hours = Preparing and running Flipstarter campaign to increase prize pool.
5 hours = Press.
10 hours = Buffer to cover any overrun in hours required.
250 hours = Total time budget

Conditions
This hackathon will only support a Bitcoin Cash that does not contain the IFP. If no version of Bitcoin Cash without the IFP exists, then this hackathon will not go ahead.

 

[solex]

Nice proposal @singularity
Number assigned and heading is updated.

 

[singularity]

Thanks @solex!

 

[Griffith]

BUIP slightly unclear.

You never directly stated if you are requesting. Funding? Just sponsorship? something else?

Can you please add something at the top that is a clear request on what the BUIP is asking for?

 

[theZerg]

1. I don't love that there's a $17000 administrative fee for a $15000 prize pool. Especially because this will surely be remote, and since the teams are required to create their own videos. So administrative work could be quite limited, as opposed to an in-person event which would entail managing the venue, capturing video of the teams working, and editing that all together into a final piece. Or it could be totally worth it if the end product is really inspiring (see my point 3).

So I would like to see the administrative work explored further. And ideally, the administrative work be paid via itemized invoices, at a defined hourly rate, not to exceed the specified amount.


2. Add a cancellation policy if 5 or fewer teams have signed up by a certain date. You'll have put in some work so the policy should propose an upper limit if the event is cancelled.

3. In a similar vein, we should get a 1 pager about contestant's ideas and be allowed to accept or reject it to ensure that trivial or in some way objectionable (for example, a service that makes micropayments for shitposting on reddit) projects don't get to compete. Maybe we can post these ideas as teasers, or maybe we keep them confidential?

 

[singularity]

BUIP slightly unclear.

You never directly stated if you are requesting. Funding? Just sponsorship? something else?

Can you please add something at the top that is a clear request on what the BUIP is asking for?

I'm happy to update the BUIP to clarify this info. The BUIP is requesting funding for this event and that this event be an official BU hosted event.

1. I don't love that there's a $17000 administrative fee for a $15000 prize pool. Especially because this will surely be remote, and since the teams are required to create their own videos. So administrative work could be quite limited, as opposed to an in-person event which would entail managing the venue, capturing video of the teams working, and editing that all together into a final piece. Or it could be totally worth it if the end product is really inspiring (see my point 3).

So I would like to see the administrative work explored further. And ideally, the administrative work be paid via itemized invoices, at a defined hourly rate, not to exceed the specified amount.


2. Add a cancellation policy if 5 or fewer teams have signed up by a certain date. You'll have put in some work so the policy should propose an upper limit if the event is cancelled.

3. In a similar vein, we should get a 1 pager about contestant's ideas and be allowed to accept or reject it to ensure that trivial or in some way objectionable (for example, a service that makes micropayments for shitposting on reddit) projects don't get to compete. Maybe we can post these ideas as teasers, or maybe we keep them confidential?

1. Personally, I don't think the ratio of the costs vs prizes is too important. The goal of the event isn't to give away money. The goal is to bring in developers into BCH (and BU) and get further exposure for BCH and BU. For example, we could easily just put out a doc on read.cash saying we will give out $17,000 in prizes in one week for the best submitted project that follows the outlined rules. This would give out the $17,000 just as well, but without any effort in getting exposure there will likely be few entries, the entries will be of a poor quality and the impact for BCH and BU would be minimal.

By putting resources into making sure the event is well promoted and well managed it means that it has the highest chance of success and maximum impact.

Also, the teams wouldn't just be required to create their own videos. I think it would make sense to have a livestream on the final day to interview each of the teams. I have a good idea of who we could hire for this.

2. Agreed that this is sensible.

3. I think having a filter and a more clear picture of what we would be after is sensible. Also, working with the teams to make sure the output is valuable to the ecosystem could be helpful.

 

[singularity]

1. I don't love that there's a $17000 administrative fee for a $15000 prize pool. Especially because this will surely be remote, and since the teams are required to create their own videos. So administrative work could be quite limited, as opposed to an in-person event which would entail managing the venue, capturing video of the teams working, and editing that all together into a final piece. Or it could be totally worth it if the end product is really inspiring (see my point 3).

So I would like to see the administrative work explored further. And ideally, the administrative work be paid via itemized invoices, at a defined hourly rate, not to exceed the specified amount.


2. Add a cancellation policy if 5 or fewer teams have signed up by a certain date. You'll have put in some work so the policy should propose an upper limit if the event is cancelled.

3. In a similar vein, we should get a 1 pager about contestant's ideas and be allowed to accept or reject it to ensure that trivial or in some way objectionable (for example, a service that makes micropayments for shitposting on reddit) projects don't get to compete. Maybe we can post these ideas as teasers, or maybe we keep them confidential?

Here's a rough breakdown in terms of hours required on each type of work.


60 hours = Team support before, during and after the hackathon.
40 hours = Web development
20 hours = Partnership marketing.
25 hours = Branding graphics including: logo, social media gfx, website gfx, and ad gfx.
25 hours = Video motion graphics branding including: video intro, video outro, lower thirds.
15 hours = Finding and working with other sponsors.
10 hours = Ad management.
10 hours = Livestream prep and hosting.
15 hours = Video content management.
10 hours = Website content management.
5 hours = Preparing and running Flipstarter campaign to increase prize pool.
5 hours = Press.
10 hours = Buffer to cover any overrun in hours required.
250 hours = Total time budget

 

[Griffith]

Request for 32.000 in funding for the event? ok thanks for the clarification. @singularity

 

[theZerg]

@singularity, I agree with you, and that's why I'm asking for a breakdown and details on what is arguably the most important part. Thanks for providing that!

Based on what you've written, some deliverables are implied, e.g. website, logos, etc. Those deliverables are really what the $17k is buying. For clarity, can you list those explicitly and briefly describe them? (Also, to ensure there's no legal confusion, it needs to be clear that BU owns those deliverables, similar to how devs must use MIT license working under our BUIPs)

For example in "branding", what exactly is being branded? Is it usable for BU or just specific to this hackathon? Is that brand re-usable post hackathon? If not, is there some way to tie that brand into BU more strongly, to make those materials somehow reusable, or to keep the brand in our back pocket for future hackathons, meetups, conferences, etc? How long will we keep the web site live post hackathon?

 

[singularity]

@theZerg You've brought up some great points. I have updated the document now with extra info. Specifically in the sections 'Objectives & Key Results', 'Deliverables', and 'Time & Funding Budget'.