BUIP136: Andrew Clifford for President
Proposer: Andrew Clifford
Submitted on: 2019-11-09
Status: draft
The fourth anniversary of Bitcoin Unlimited’s foundation is on 19
November 2019, shortly after the date of this post. For two months the
organization boot-strapped itself as a collective of like-minded people
concerned about the prospects of Bitcoin (BTC) , where Core Dev was
rejecting onchain scaling.
The first election of BU president was completed on 21 January 2016, so
each term expires on the same date every two years. As the next BU
membership vote commences 25 November and the following one will occur
after 21 January 2020, it is expedient to conduct the vote for president
earlier, when other BUIPs are being considered.
Two years ago I mentioned that BU, as an org, maintains a consistent
technically-aware and “politics-lite” message. This is a test of
discipline, especially in the face of non-stop, corporate-funded troll
attacks. Sadly, we see lately, that just delivering good software and
advancing BCH is not enough. Poisonous words and memes do sway some
members of the community who are not aware of the full picture. So, I
will support a more active campaign to explain what BU is doing and
correct the toxic rewriting of history, when it occurs.
My support will continue for Bitcoin Cash community events and helping
worthy causes such as the Bitcoin Cash City conference gain sponsorship.
The Bitcoin Unlimited developers have steadily constructed by far the
most advanced and scalable version of Bitcoin software which exists
today. It can handle much higher volumes than the prevailing level on
BCH.
About two months ago, BCH was hit by spam-like transactions and its
mempool choked up due to 2MB being used as a mining default. Afterwards,
I was shocked to see 2MB blocks being defended as appropriate, that it
is “polite” to other full nodes on the network. Hmm.
Let’s see what is not polite. A few months earlier, BSV enabled 2GB
blocks and one of its miners promptly produced a monster block which
knocked some of their major users off the network including its flagship
Yours service. Hmm again.
Where is the middle-ground for onchain-scaling? My personal view is that
100 TPS is a very reasonable medium-term target for BCH to handle,
especially if this is organic volume from many different businesses and
use-cases. This means 32MB blocks will be common, well above 2MB, but
nowhere near 2GB. That is the middle-ground, and I am proud that the BU
devs have created the most capable software for handling that level of
business. I see the president’s role as facilitating a constructive
environment for such middle-ground development.
Admin support continues for the BU development environment
(Github/Gitlab and TravisCI) while helping to foster development in
general for Bitcoin Cash through regular communication with other
development teams and business stake-holders.
I still want to complete a new official registration in a favourable
jurisdiction, yet this this remains incomplete. Unfortunately, the
regulatory environment in the last year or so has become very unfriendly
to organizations in the cryptocurrency space, and new barriers are
raised even as earlier ones are overcome. I am wondering whether the BTC
price passing $10k finally triggered alarm bells in mainstream finance
and entrenched interests? What was previously seen a revolutionary
innovation is now seen as a black-swan threat requiring mitigation.
My objective will be to continue good stewardship of the BU voting
process, ensuring the membership’s collective will is reflected in all
passed BUIPs. I remain committed to advancing Bitcoin Cash as the
decentralized, p2p cash, scalable Bitcoin with most potential. As
previously, the mission has not changed: I will continue what we have
started with BU, improve all facets of its operation with the goal of
doing BU’s part to realise Satoshi’s 2008 white paper vision for the
world.