A Statement Regarding the November Hardfork
It’s obvious there’s been a lot of political drama in bitcoin cash as of lately. I’ve found it wise to stay out of the politics for the most part. It’s enabled me to keep good working relationships with more people in the space, but aside form that, its also enabled me to keep my focal point in bitcoin cash: Focusing on and promoting user and merchant adoption.
I’m writing this article to share this message with the people involved with bitcoin cash: 1.“**No matter what happens to BCH in November, I’m staying with it**”, and 2. “**I’m not worried about the outcome either**”.
Starting with the first statement. Why am I committed to the BCH chain? Simple answer: “I’m in it to promote its adoption, not its politics. Although I do have a preference for one of the node teams to gain the majority hash in November, and it is somewhat important to me, it is not as important to me as sticking with the network effect of bitcoin cash and promoting adoption on it.
What do I want the outcome in November to be? It doesn’t matter. This brings me to my second statement of why I’m not worried about the outcome. I view bitcoin as simply a mechanism that rewards actors on the network for acting in their own interest and seeking profit on it. If you think about it, miners will be the ones most affected by the November hard fork since they will be the ones paying the 8% of the block reward. If they choose to run the client with the IFP in it, then they will bear the brunt of the results of their own actions. It’s on them. Why should I be so worried about what business decisions miners make. It’s their business, not mine.
I’ll conclude here by asking a question. Why are you involved with bitcoin cash? Are you there to mine blocks, develop software, spread adoption, seek profit? Or are you mainly in it to be a part of a political book club?
I plead with the readers of this article: Evaluate the reason/motivation you’re involved with bitcoin. Resolve to stay with bitcoin cash whether the November outcome goes your way or not. Take encouragement if that’s what you have already decided to do.
P.S. As an additional effort to help my BCH friends to move their focus out of the bookclub and on to adoption, I’ve left a small amount of BCH below for the first claimer. Go and onboard someone. Print out some of those bitcoin.com gifts to hand out. Thank you very much.
Bitcoin Cash Dev Meetup 04/04/20 Recap
**Introduction**
The last developer meetup was about Bitcoin Cash Payment buttons. The main highlight was Ty's project called https://gateway.cash. Here's the attendee turnout:
**Attendees:**
Christian [https://github.com/alt-win]
Chris Troutner [https://FullStack.cash] [https://github.com/christroutner]
Ty Everett [https://openstandards.cash] [https://github.com/ty-everett]
Steven Posick
Sterling [https://github.com/sterlingbeason/SnappyCash]
**Gateway.cash**
Gateway is a payment button for Bitcoin Cash that has some high-level features including merchant signup, sever-authenticated payments, transaction fee based revenue model, and more. You can check out the documentation at https://gateway.cash/docs/#gateway-cash-paybutton.
**Paybutton.cash**
Paybutton is a bit simpler than gateway. Christian made a fork of Paybutton and updated the color to green. He also changed the back end to use bitdb instead of the Rest API.
**Data Integrity + Censorship Resistance**
Christ Troutner has been working on code to make unsensorable websites using IPFS and hashes written onto the BCH Blockchain. You can check it out here: https://troutsblog.com/about/.
Ty Everet has a Proof-of-Concept paper that integrates the same two technologies in cloud VM's. You can read his detailed paper here: https://github.com/open-cash-standards/papers/blob/master/computing-with-integrity/paper.pdf
**Conclusion**
The meeting ended with a discussion about the need for a web wallet for Bitcoin Cash and about web wallet security. I really enjoyed the discussions had.
The next meeting will Feature P0oker and his new signup.cash project. Stay tuned.
Bitcoin Cash Dev Meetup 03/28/20 Recap
Introduction
This is the second weekly developer meetup that I've hosted. This time there were 8 attendees total. Some of the main topics talked about were https://FullStack.cash and the new OpenStandards.cash projects.
Attendees
There were 8 attendees total. One of which would prefer not to be named:
Christian [https://github.com/alt-win]
Jerry Qian [https://github.com/lightswarm124]
Chris Troutner [https://FullStack.cash] [https://github.com/christroutner]
Zunnurayni Looking into SLP
Ty Everett [https://openstandards.cash] [https://github.com/ty-everett]
Steven Posick
Anonymous
Zunnurayni joined us from Nigeria for the first time. He is growing the BCH community there, and came to learn more about the different tools available for BCH software developers. https://twitter.com/ZunnurayniIdris
Fullstack.cash
Chris Troutner gave everyone a presentation of fullstack.cash during the meetup. This is a website that currently offers a pay-per-use Rest API for Bitcoin Cash & SLP services. It was forked from Gabriel Cardona's Bitbox project.
Fullstack.cash is currently live and open for business. It is a great solution for companies that don't want to use the slower free resources, but also don't want to pay to much for a dedicated server.
OpenStandards.cash
As the meeting moved on, the discussion moved on to Chris's Permissionless Software Foundation, which led in to a discussion about the need for a platform for peer-reviewed software & technical specification papers for Bitcoin Cash. Then Ty had an idea: https://psfoundation.cash/
**Ty**: I'm buying a domain right now!
**Christian**: Can you tell us what it is after you buy it?
**Ty**: Uh, Sure.
The domain was literally registered right there during the meeting. After which, a github repository was created, added as a redirect, and the first two papers were added. Hopefully sometime in the future it will be a fully developed website where you can add new items via pull request to a github database (similar to https://acceptbitcoin.cash) just like Chris suggested.
Next Developer Meeting
Next meeting will be this Saturday, April 4th, 2020 @ 9am PST. The topic will be about payment buttons for Bitcoin Cash. There are a couple of people attending the next one that are working on their own payment buttons. Be sure and follow me on Twitter for updates on the meeting, and subscribe to my Youtube Channel for updates on Bitcoin Cash adoption coverage as well. https://youtube.com/BitcoinCast
Thoughts on the First Online BCH meetup in California
Introduction
I'm Christian of Bitcoin Cast. I normally host Bitcoin Cash Meetups in Southern California, but with the recent turn of events have had to move them online. https://youtube.com/BitcoinCast
Obstacles
There are two obvious obstacles that came to my mind when moving a BCH meetup online.
One thing is that Bitcoin Cash people like to support merchant that accepts BCH during a meetup. My thought was to find an online merchant that accepts BCH, and have them on for the first 5-10 minutes of the call. This would give attendees a chance to support a merchant accepting BCH.
Another obstacle to deal with is that the social dynamic is different with in online meetups than in-person meetups. With IRL meetups, you can freely switch between conversation groups. This can be somewhat simulated with online meeting software using breakout rooms in zoom, or different audio rooms in discord. However, it is not ideal, since with real life meetups, you can faintly hear the other conversations in the background.
Moving Forward
I decided to make these meetups developer-focused for two reasons. First, a great deal of Bitcoin Cash people in California happen to be developers as well. Second, since many of us are stuck at home with a lot more time on our hands, I thought this would be a great opportunity to encourage building cool software projects for Bitcoin Cash.
Tools Used
Telegram - Announced the meetup on the Bitcoin Cash California Telegram Chat. It has been a helpful tool for collaborating with BCH people in the area.
Discord - Discord I'd say was somewhat helpful. I mainly used it because I could create multiple audio rooms for the meetup, since I don't have a zoom pro account to create breakout rooms.
Zoom - The great thing about zoom, is that meetup attendees don't need to sign up for an account to join the call. It's been really reliable for video calls, and I've been using for Bitcoin Cast shows as well.
Cryptpad.fr - This is kind of like a cross between pastebin and google drive. I used it to take and share notes during the meetup. You don't even need an account to create a note.
Meetup.com - Just another way to publicize your meetup events.
Meeting Summary
There were 6 attendees total. Everyone had a chance to talk about which software projects they were working on. For the most part, everyone stayed in the same room during the meeting. We even had a surprise visit from Tobias Ruck (a talented bitcoin script writer) towards the end.
Here's a list of some of the attendees and what they're currently working on for Bitcoin Cash and the SLP ecosystem:
Christian - spicebutton.com [https://github.com/alt-win]
Dreamtrove - SLP tipping bot + atomic swaps, SLP minting baton controled by smart contract, cross-chain token transfer
Ty Everett - gateway.cash, pay-per-use router in BCH + TOR, Virtual machine stored on blockchain, BCH DNS system [https://github.com/ty-everett]
Sterling - Snappy Cash browser extension, twitter faucet [https://github.com/sterlingbeason]
Conclusion
The meeting went very well, and was inspiring for more software creation for Bitcoin Cash + SLP enviroment. I plan to host this online gathering next weekend at the same time, making this a weekly event, and look forward to the progress that will be made on each project. I also hope to see visits form other Giants in the BCH software community at future meetings. The likes of Imaginary_Username, Jonald Fyookball, Chris Troutner, Jason Cox, and Pokkst would be awesome additions to future gatherings as well as any other BCH software contributor (Cheers to you if you're on that list reading this article:).
Although this quarantine has made things difficult, I've decided to make the most of it with these new meetups. What do you plan to build for Bitcoin Cash?
@BitcoinCast
