Cheapy Supports the VMLA and Big Int CHIPS
Cheap Lightning (of the BCHF, Flipwatch, https://t.me/bchchannel, https://t.me/BCHMEMES, Discover.cash) endorses both CHIP-2021-05 VM Limits: Targeted Virtual Machine Limits and CHIP-2024-07 BigInt: High-Precision Arithmetic for Bitcoin Cash, and wish to thank Jason Dreyzehner and everyone who worked tirelessly to make this happen* https://bitcoincashfoundation.org/ https://flipwatch.org/ https://discover.cash/ https://github.com/bitjson/bch-vm-limits?ref=blog.bitjson.com https://github.com/bitjson/bch-bigint?ref=blog.bitjson.com
*however…..
I wish to express a caveat that comes with my endorsement.
It seems like every time I write a post on read.cash it starts with “BCH is decentralized…” which is starting to feel redundant but at the same time is important for framing.
There is no “right way” nor is there an “official” anything. There is no official node or telegram or foundation or even upgrade schedule. So of course there is also no official way to conduct an upgrade. BCH is a collection of all the things people have agreed upon as good. But those good things are the result of literally millions of dollars spent, untold thousands of human hours of effort and pain and not at all without sacrifice. We got to where we are today not through magic or chance or luck. We got to where we are now because many SOMEONES aligned on a common goal and purpose and worked incredibly hard to achieve those goals.
The path we took was hard fought. Satoshi was a visionary, but he was not clairvoyant. If he stuck around longer he may have been able to set the foundation for upgrades and dispute resolution with some amount of clarity. He understood the code very well and how to make *the thing*. But he did not really considered the weakest element of the network. The very weak flesh.
If bitcoin is decentralized money for the world and the code is without bugs it will chug along fine with little need for human interference… right? Even assuming for a moment that there are no bad actors and that since the WP was published everyone has been acting in good faith all along, humans will still have a difference of opinion on how best to get from point A to point B. Some will argue there is not even any point in going from A to B if we can jump right to C and others will even argue that the alphabet is dumb and we should use numbers instead. Nakamoto consensus works on a very technical level…assuming that miners and hash are willing to make any effort or take any interest beyond short term profits. But there are multiple levels of effort that need to be made before we get to voting by hash. If Satoshi had considered the social level and dispute resolution in 2014, the hashwars would have looked very differently assuming they would have happened at all and global adoption and bitcoin development would be 10 years ahead of where it is now.
BCH is the phoenix that has had to raise itself from the ashes multiple times. Every time we have survived a near fatal blow it has come from the social layer. BTC still has no upgrade process nor any way to measure consensus or “technical consensus” which is by design. It keeps the plebs from “tricking the code”. When BCH had a “benevolent dictator” upgrades were every 6 months and not always done for the best of reasons. BCH indeed had a dictator. He was more or less holding the keys to the kingdom. This was (arguably) used as an excuse for the BSV fork. This was also what lead to the eCash split. Daddy wanted to get paid one way or another and decided to force the issue. If things were truly decentralized at that time there would have been a process to guide or indicate support for his plan other than all out social war followed by 3rd hash war and worst of all another community split. But through all this strife it became clear there has got to be a better way to “improve” the chain than dumping millions of dollars in the toilet and telling 50ish% of the community, projects and developers to fuck off. The survivors thought the same and while many people were involved in the creation of the CHIP process, Imaginary Username was the first to formally write it out. CHIPS.MD is the culmination of all the learning from our trauma and mistakes. It brilliantly lays out a schedule and process to keep BCH improving and also avoid social disputes and if disputes do arise how to resolve them. https://gitlab.com/im_uname https://gitlab.com/im_uname/cash-improvement-proposals/-/blob/master/CHIPs.md
What does this have to do with Big Ints?
We are more or less aligned as a community at the moment, and there has been little dispute over how development is progressing, which is amazing and due in no small part to the CHIP process. If you have not read CHIPS.MD read it now. CHIP may not be the best system. But it is the best we have. https://gitlab.com/im_uname/cash-improvement-proposals/-/blob/master/CHIPs.md
Upgrades come in many shapes and sizes. The cost of evaluating and implementing them also comes in all shapes and sizes. This is an unavoidable burden that goes hand in hand with decentralization. If no one is in charge to dictate what is and is not accepted we have to discover who does and does not want X to happen and the only way to do that is ask people to participate. In a perfect world all the stakeholders would be tuned in and involved in the discussions and miners would be right there with us weighing in and providing insight. But that is not the world we live in. “BCH insiders” may be relatively well tuned in but it is unreasonable to assume that even “BCH insiders” are keeping their eyes on bitcoincashresearch.org to sniff out what is going on. They have businesses to run and their own projects to work on and develop. CHIPs.MD lays out a schedule that allows a lot of time and leeway to evaluate, test, consider and debate these changes that have far reaching consequences. Part of the reasoning for this very long schedule is to lessen the burden across the network for stakeholders to come to consensus on their own schedules without having to enter panic mode. Forcing stakeholders to make last minute decisions will have overall negative results. http://bitcoincashresearch.org/
1. Many people in the wider ecosystem will simply abstain because they don’t have time. This leads to very low engagement where as consensus should be obvious and overwhelming.
2. People who are not so technically inclined rely on those who are to come to conclusions and then take those conclusions into account while making their own. Again pushing back their own research further to the “deadline”.
3. Rushing leads to mistakes. Be it bugs or even just misunderstanding or misinterpretation.
In the case of BIG INTS and VMLA it was the worst time for me personally. The proposals were finalized on OCT 1st 2024 and I was asked on OCT 4th 2024 for my support which sadly was also exactly when I had unavoidable family issues that needed my immediate attention. I am not a developer myself and I stand on the shoulders of giants to help me inform my opinion. Opinions that to some degree are not available yet, assuming they will ever come, less than 1 week away from “lock in”. Looking at stakeholders.md there is pretty strong support from within the central BCH community, but ideally I want to see much stronger support from people/projects who are not in the BCH trenches on a daily level.
The Knuth node team published support but with some strong footnotes about risks and alternatives that the wider community won’t have time to discuss or evaluate on November 6th. https://github.com/bitjson/bch-vm-limits/blob/master/stakeholders.md https://x.com/KnuthNode/status/1854169580463354297
Ideally I would like to have had far more time to evaluate and research. I tried to keep myself abreast of developments and the CHIPs as they progressed but also at the same time there is the added burden of evaluating a thing that is not complete and then having to re-evaluate it multiple times as the kinks are worked out. I watched as BitcoinCashAutist, Calin Culianu and others burnt the midnight oil to help get these proposals ready for prime time. For that reason and my faith in Jason and his abilities I endorse these CHIPs. However I also really hope that future CHIPs will not have the same degree of last minute rush needed.
I can only speak for myself and my projects. This is of course just my opinion and if I end up in the minority that thinks we need to have things finalized for evaluation sooner vs. “move fast and break things” then so be it. However consider this a one and only exception. I refuse to have these CHIPs set some kind of precedent as to how close to November 15th CHIPs can be finalized for evaluation. Going forward I will refuse to evaluate or support and will "disapprove" of any proposal that I feel needs to be rushed or requires me to re-prioritize my own work and efforts for my endorsement to ready by November 15th.
A Possible Future For The BCHF - OMG is it a HOSTILE takeover!?
***TLDR: SOMEONE had to do SOMETHING, so here we are. The End.***
It is October 31st 2023. The 15 year anniversary of Satoshi publishing the Bitcoin White Paper! Time flies!
I decided that today is the perfect day to publish this sort of establishing document. This document should be considered a living document and is in no way its final form. My purpose and goal today is to demonstrate intention. The things below are not presented in order of priority and I welcome any and all feedback especially from those I solicited it from directly. There are no doubt gaps in various categories about what BCH needs and I would love to hear what you think they are and where my/our limited time and effort is best focused.
When I originally wrote about "The Bitcoin Cash Foundation", I was not really planning to take it much further than that post. However it quickly became clear to me that there are many gaps in our decentralized front that "**someone**" needed to fill. If we are right and BCH is going to grow to become the global reserve currency we need to be ready for an influx of people. If/when that happens it will be abrupt and sudden and **MASSIVE**. We got a small taste of it when sBCH launched. We were not ready and we were quickly overwhelmed. It is important we set the stage and build the foundation NOW before we 10x or 100x over a weekend. https://read.cash/@CheapLightning/announcing-the-official-bitcoin-cash-foundation-5f360d84
****But who was going to do it?****
Our current most popular node BCHN, are they Papa BCH?
Is it up to them and their development "warchest"?
Should node devs be handing out stickers and writing entire ecosystem news articles, making basics tutorial and organizing conferences?
No not really. I mean they can if they want and have the resources to spare. Every little bit helps. But some people want to push all the responsibility onto devs. Devs have a very particular set of skills generally. Maybe you do not even want them making memes to begin with.
At any rate you can not expect them to write the code, make memes, fund everything, moderate chats, plan meetups/conferences/hackathons, do outreach and .............
****MARKETING****
A while ago I surveyed many prominent people in the BCH community about what they would do if they have 1 million dollars to spend on helping BCH. You can read the results here. One thing that came up over and over again was "marketing". It is no secret we're are extremely lacking in that field. BCH is the "anti-hype" chain. On the one hand I think it is kind of good. There is no Pump n' Dump hyperbole going on in BCH land. https://read.cash/@CheapLightning/1-million-dollars-b3c187b6
No hot air to fill your balloon with silly shit. Everyone seems hyper focused on making scalable global decentralized money.
But it also means fewer people are using BCH because they do not even know we exist.
When we think of marketing, we tend to think BIG like, viral videos or billboard trucks or Superbowl halftime videos. Which... again if you want hot air, are great. But what if we zoom very far out and think way way more basic? What is the point of "marketing"? At the most basic level it is to get you familiar with a thing. Getting the brand, the name, the slogan, the logo in front of people and hopefully generating some curiosity as well. In other words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAMRFDs9iOs
****What have we tried so far?****
In the early days there was the "Bitcoin Cash Fund" (later renamed to the "Bitcoin Cash Association"). I do not know the details about their finances so its hard for me to judge how successful they were as far as the value they generated. But they certainly had some initiatives that I think were of great use at the time. They funded early meetups and provided stickers and shirts to give away. They also put together some of the earliest educational videos. I am glad these efforts happened. Without them I am not sure I would have gotten as involved in BCH as I did (ie creating the Osaka Meetup) if not for the support I had from them back then. The BCA faded out at some point after turning into a legal non profit and I assume losing most of their funds due to the bear market/BCH split price crashes.
For a long time Bitcoin.com was similarly funding meetups and making videos and supplying swag as well leading BCH adoption and promotion efforts all across the globe which, for whatever reason, they no longer do.
There was "Coinspice" which, while they were a marketed as a "crypto" news platform, they certainly leaned heavily towards BCH promo. They sponsored events and did regular news articles, videos and interviews. I think it is fair to say Coinspice died when the 2 founders found themselves on opposite sides of the eCash split and Coinspice sadly was caught in the crossfire. Somewhat ironically neither founder seems to be involved in either side of the fork any more which sadly is not an isolated case from the last split. It seems that fight took the wind out of quite a few people's sails.
***As a side note***: *Just in case some of you who used to be heavily involved in BCH and had to take a step back are reading this. I understand and I do not blame you. It was a pretty brutal time. Thank you for all you did to help get BCH where it is today. I really feel like the stars are finally aligning. Your efforts helped get us here. Hopefully we have taken the baton and made great progress in the race. We are keeping the lights on for you. Come back any time you are ready.*
For the past 2 years Jeremy has been making the Bitcoin Cash Podcast and bitcoincashpodcast.com and the numbers of viewers, listeners, followers and readers etc keeps going up.
Cashrain.com is no doubt getting some first BCH sats into people's hands.
Similarly Read.Cash, Memo.Cash, Noise.app, r/btc, r/bitcoincash and other SNS have certainly been many people's first steps into BCH land.
We can not forget all the effort being made in Townsville but the BCH city crew. By far the most grassroots adoption and strongest circular economy we have.
Meetups
Conferences
Moleculars Reddit tipping
Sunny’s St.Kitts efforts
Hackathons
Daily Satoshi Doodles
Bitcoin Cash TV
BCH Meme group on TG
There have been at least 5 LARGE "marketing" focused flipstarter campaigns. As far as I can tell they have been overall, at best, expensive disappointments and at worst outright scams.
One of the most common things I hear on general crypto sites/chats is surprise that BCH is still around, or not connected to CSW etc. General awareness is low. For the most part we have been hunkering down for the last few years. When survival is the priority it makes sense that the push to raise awareness would go by the wayside. I think we have worked hard to become more harmonious as a community and the developers have certainly worked really hard to improve BCH and make it even more useful and the inward healing and focus period is coming to a close.
That being said we exist in the dark. There is little information outside of our bubble about BCH and a lot of it is incorrect.
Even the BCH logo and NAME shown across many major sites and apps is wrong.
Well ***someone*** should make an effort to correct that! ***Someone*** needs to reach out to get these logos corrected. ***Someone*** needs to publish BCH news outside of our bubble. ***Someone*** needs to compile information into an accessible place. ***Someone*** needs to make sure that stakeholders upgrade their nodes annually and a long list of other efforts that need to be done.
****THE SOMEONES!****
All of the above does not need to be done by one person. But if everyone waits for ***someone*** to do ***something*** no one will do anything. That is not to say no one is making any effort. That is far from the truth and not at all what I am trying to say. There are however many little (and big) things that no one has put on their plate but many have on their to do lists, perhaps because they are too busy being a DEV or have a meatspace job or family obligations or any other of the myriad of reasons these things are not a priority. Ideally this is where the BCHF will step up and be able to fill in these gaps.
****Current and Possible Future Activities of the BCHF****
Again please note that all of the activities listed below are POSSIBLE things the BCHF may work on in the future and not a final proposal or mission statement. The BCHF is committed to helping BCH grow and this is research as how to best assist that goal. The purpose of this article is to solicit community feedback similar to a CHIP proposal. Eventually, after evaluating all the feedback, I will expand and then whittle this down and make a more formal proposal.
Also worth noting I plan on consulting any previous donors to my previous efforts as it is my intention to fold all the public good works projects I work on into the BCHF including the “Bitcoin Cash Network Discussions”, “Build.cash”, and “Flipwatch.org”. Some donors were anonymous but if anyone who donated to my previous projects would like a refund I am happy to do so. Please contact me. The total is not a lot of money (hundreds not thousands of USD) but none the less as it is a change of scope and I would respect the wishes of anyone who would prefer a refund vs assuming they would like to forward the donation to the BCHF. I have not yet spent a single satoshi of any donations to projects I have worked on. https://www.youtube.com/@BCHNetworkDiscussion
****The Faces/Conference Crew****
Up until now Roger has been THE face of BCH. Roger has expressed a desire to take a step back as the public face and rightfully BCH needs to be able to survive without the help of any 1 person.
BCH however is lacking presence. We are virtually unknown in most circles and in many crypto circles only as a joke (Bcash lol) or a footnote because they do not know any better and have only heard a distorted version of historic events. One way to combat that is by getting out there and increasing visibility. People still associate BCH with people long gone and in some cases ejected from the community or infinitely large blocks. One simple thing to do to raise awareness is just by being present and visible and welcoming non-combative conversation. There is a major difference in tone and culture in the bitcoin and larger crypto space today than the battle grounds hard fought in 2015-2018. If you go to ANY bitcoin or ethereum or general crypto conference or meetup today you will find every flavor of project imaginable represented. All manner of silly scammy things mixed in with the big serious projects as well. The days of overwhelming maximalism are long gone. But what you will NOT find is any BCH or BCH centric project presence. We have been building quietly in the shadows and I think it is time to come out.
To that end I have already been in contact with some of the major global conference organizers (on behalf of the BCHF) to attempt to get BCH on stage or at the very least represented. I wish I could say I have been successful but as of yet they still mostly seem to ONLY want to get Roger.
What I propose is having a crew of well known, knowledgeable and non combative BCH experts who are ready to take the stage or man a booth to help spread the word and help people get to know BCH for what it truly is and not the caricature that exists.
As we grow we could also create a list of local vetted people capable of repping BCH in their continent/country. These ambassadors could be provided with BCH swag or a budget to locally create their own to do presentations in local forums. Or at the very least provide them with the latest information they need to do presentations.
I have already talked to 3 respected community members and asked if they would be willing to do the above and what it would cost to have them do so plus travel expenses.
**Outreach/Contact**
As it is now BCH has no “official” representatives. This is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand no one has the authority to speak on behalf of the chain. On the other hand there is no one on hand to answer questions. Worse still, if you were developing your business and intended to integrate BCH or a mining pool that wanted to switch nodes and wanted to get an answer various questions where would you go?
The BCHF has no intention of becoming the official representatives or official word of BCH. However the BCHF would like to be available to the world to contact so at the very least you can be pointed in the right direction. This would of course be voluntary. No one needs to deal with the BCHF if they do not want to. It would be nice to have the option though.
Beyond the passive role of “being available” the BCHF would like to take a proactive role and become a contact point for players in the industry. The BCHF can proactively contact all the major players in the overall crypto space to remind them to upgrade their nodes when necessary. The BCHF can contact all the major players to let them know of any new developments like CashTokens that may interest them. The BCHF can actively encourage players to integrate BCH into their platform and applications. The BCHF can continue and expand its effort to make sure that BCH is presented on various places in an accurate and up to date manner (branding, information, links, statistics etc.).
****The News****
At the time of writing the BCHF has been publishing the weekly BCH news for 5 months now expanding the news from only read.cash/Twitter/Telegram/Reddit (though at the moment the BCHF reddit account is blocked by reddit) to publications like medium, publish0x and coinmarketcap.com as well as creating video versions of the news published on Youtube and Odysee. Soon we will also be publishing an audio version to all the major podcast platforms as well. The effort may appear simple however it currently takes more than 8 hours per week to get it all done. https://twitter.com/BCHF_ORG https://coinmarketcap.com/community/profile/bitcoincash/ https://www.youtube.com/@BitcoinCashFoundation/videos
• Gathering the stories
• Vetting them
• Writing the news
• Gathering or creating graphics for each story
• Creating the graphic for this weeks price and power usage
• Publishing the story across 7 platforms
• Recording the video
• Editing /Rendering the Video
• Publishing across 4 platforms
• Ripping the audio
• Publishing Audio to all the major podcast platforms
I believe this service to be valuable to BCH so I have donated my time to keep the news alive but it would no doubt be faster if a team were working on it.
**The Stickers**
“Bitcoin Cash Accepted Here” stickers are not easy to get your hands on and they are expensive even if you can find them. Generally a store needs less than 5 per location and that means they are not going to go to the trouble of getting some professionally printed. Larger chain places may, but the majority of BCH accepting retailers are smaller “mom and pop” type single operations. The BCHF would like to help ease the burden of accepting BCH by providing BCH accepted here stickers free of charge. Satoshis Angel’s was generous enough to donate most of the stickers already and the BCHF only had to pay the shipping cost so we have literally thousands of stickers on hand already.
How the system works is that any merchant in the world that Japan post ships to can get (up to X# depending on weight) FREE stickers sent to them at no cost. All they have to do is go to bitcoincashfoundation.org/store (finalizing now) and select which stickers they want (there are a few different sizes and they are also available in English and Spanish) and enter their info and they are done. In the future we may then ask them to enter their shops info on a map site by including a printed “how to add your store to the map” info kit.
Ideally merchants would use a POS system like the one Paytaca has that can keep track of their in store use so that the map will reflect how likely they are to still be accepting BCH based on when their last BCH TX was. The BCHF will encourage all BCH POS developers to collaborate on this tech so that universal open source data is available for anyone that wants to integrate merchant maps into future projects such as treasure hunts and AR gaming. In the future the BCHF may take it upon itself to attempt to contact merchants who have not shown activity for some amount of time to verify if they still accept BCH or not but that will be determined by several future factors.
**Flipwatch.org**
The purpose of flipwatch.org is to bring some accountability to the Flipstarter platform. As it is today if you were curious about a particular Flipstarter campaign you would have to dig through Reddit or twitter to try to find the campaign and assuming the site is still up somewhere that would only tell you what individual projects had promised, not what they delivered. Flipwatch acts as a 3rd party to attempt to not only keep track and archive projects but to also research their progress / completion and organize and present the proof if any. This will have the double effect of giving confidence to potential backers in the people they are helping and also helping build reputation with a provable easy to see metric.
**The Discord and Telegram**
Partly to help organize volunteers (see below), partly to offer a newbie (and beyond) friendly place to go and get your questions answered, The BCHF has already created both Telegram and Discord groups. One aspect is to allow people to not only volunteer but also post job offers as well as advertise their abilities in case people want to utilize them. If popular this can be spun off to a service similar to what Coingigs had to offer and perhaps become another source of income for the BCHF. This would be a longer, far more involved project in that there would need to have a clear demand down the road but to start a simple forum to match prospective jobs/workers specifically for BCH projects and paid in BCH would not only add value to the space but would also allow people who are skilled in some way get work. This of course extends into the unbanked of the world who are able to do any number of activities that can be of help to BCH centric projects and people.
**The Homepage/ .org / .info Mirror**
Time and time again the issue comes up of where to point people who want to get started in BCH. Devs should go here. End users should go there. People interested in the history of BCH should go here. Basic video tutorials are over here. It is great to be decentralized but it is also a mess. Efforts are duplicated all over the place. As it is now BCH.info is sort of the default landing page for BCH but it is bare bones and not *actively* worked on or updated. Bitcoincash.org is also sporadically updated because ownership of the domain name itself is unclear preventing people from making effort. One possibility is to have the BCHF work on keeping either bitcoincash.org/bch.info sites up to date and expanded by submitting constant PR requests while also mirroring the site(s) to another domain (bitcoinca.sh, bitcoincash.wiki and bitcoincash.help are all currently owned by me) for redundancy. If the BCHF is successful in making a great landing resource there is no reason why it could not be mirrored to all 3 assuming the owners agree and approve the merge requests to their independent githubs. This would have the benefit of having a unified voice and also decentralized ownership in case the BCHF dies or ownership of the others is lost. If structured properly I believe it would be possible to merge specific category data without taking the "style" of the site.
As everything is opensource and in the public domain, it would still be possible for any member of the public to volunteer and contribute if they so choose. The community would also benefit from having the data to pull from for their own sites/uses
This work is what I intended to do with my flipstarter for build.cash which was not funded. I still think having up to date and well maintained information is really important and so will refocus that effort onto this homepage effort to again avoid reinventing the wheel and duplication of efforts.
**Bitcoin Cash Network Discussions**
There is great value in having a platform for people to discuss ideas that perhaps they do not agree upon. The Bitcoin Cash Network Discussions has been a series of live discussions and later edited videos based on having a platform where people can come together to discuss possible future upgrades as well as the current state of the network and what people think IS working and also what IS NOT working and could be changed. It has been great platform for a meeting of minds and I would like to bring it back and have a place where people can discuss what they think about what is happening in BCH not only for future upgrades and CHIPs but also the philosophy and culture of BCH which separates us from our competition. https://www.youtube.com/@BCHNetworkDiscussion/videos https://gitlab.com/im_uname/cash-improvement-proposals/-/blob/master/CHIPs.md
**TXSTREET.com**
The current owner of Txstreet has open sourced the platform and has also expressed interest in having someone .....contribute. I am not sure if they are planning on shutting down or if they just want to focus on other chains but at any rate they are not really inspired to update the BCH end of things including adding CashToken support and seemingly keeping the infrastructure robust enough to handle BCH’s full potential as recently demonstrated by Emergent Coding breaking the site several times. A transaction visualizer is another public good the BCHF believes is worthy of running and improving.
**Bitcoin Cash Archive and Media**
Sadly a lot of our history has already been lost. Sites go down. Discussions censored and removed, videos deleted. As far as I know there is no comprehensive archive of BCH history, nor has there been a detailed timeline created of all the major events both pre and post fork. The BCHF would like to conduct interviews with as many relevant people as possible to preserve their experiences in their own words and compile and accurate timeline of events.
Beyond interviews the BCHF will archive and make available important videos and media on our own sites and by submitting it to our archive.org account/collection as well as on our youtube channel. https://archive.org/details/@bitcoin_cash_foundation https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe2C7PEEHpJ0oXwiqyPMlWohAXxMV_YQt
The BCHF will also submit relevant BCH logos and branding to stock image websites under a public domain or creative commons license or similar to allow anyone in the world access to BCH logos (This will also include logos of major BCH projects, nodes, infra, wallets etc ) and similar that are up to date and in a greater variety.
The BCHF will also create and maintain a media kit, again for ease of access for anyone who is interested in obtaining relevant BCH branding materials.
Also, while some people may think the effort is silly, but the BCHF will archive, tag and categorize BCH memes. Memes have magic social power that can change minds and inspire especially through humor. That being said, the BCHF will focus on memes that lift up BCH as opposed to attempting to pull down other chains. However valid comparisons that contrast chains abilities are ok as long as they are not mean spirited. https://bitcoincashfoundation.org/media/
**The Help Swarm Volunteers**
BCH has a wonderful giving community. There are so many talented and hard working people doing all kinds of things to help push BCH along in various ways and many of them do so on a volunteer basis which is admirable. A lot, if not most, of the effort is however scattershot and disorganized. It would be helpful if there was a way to help organize the swarm of volunteers in some way to help amplify their grass roots efforts. Volunteers can be focused and honed via either Telegram or Discord or both. There is certainly room to have contests with trivial rewards such as special titles in the group or donated Tokens/NFTs for those that create content that meets certain criteria however as with all things, high signal and low noise is the preferred way.
**The Mod Squad**
The first income earning enterprise I hope to get off the ground is something I am calling “the mod squad”. As more and more projects launch on BCH more and more of them will need to interact with the BCH community and to also build their own. One challenge every project faces is the initial setup of things like Telegram and Discord as well as the ongoing efforts to moderate the communities they build. It would be lovely to have someone take care of all of that for you so you can focus on deving the thing you want to dev. It is of course possible to hire people but unless you know them personally can you trust them? Going through some crypto bro service will probably get you some low knowledge people that may or may not be reliable. What if you could just pay the BCHF to provide up to 3 aligned and high knowledge mods who are well vetted and established community members who would also set up your groups with bots and co-ordinate across all the other BCH groups with spam/ban lists and filter commands? There is certainly some advantage to having consistency across groups.
They would of course follow the rules established by the group/project owner and be as strict or relaxed as the owner wants. The owner would of course be owner and retain all abilities to remove the mod squad and any rule they wanted. They would also have the final say in all matter.
The Mod Squad will be available in priced tiers.
Initial Set up of a community.
Monthly mod fee per mod.
Monthly mod fee based on group size.
As a public good the Mod Squad would be available to the main public channels at no cost (assuming the owners would welcome them) these channels include @bchchannel, @bchprice, @cashtokens @BCHdevandbuilders as well as any BCHF associated channels (@BCHF_org, @Networkdiscussions @flipwatch @bchfnews and any future major community channels).
Mods would be paid a fixed monthly salary as well as an increase for every new group added and a 1 time rate for setting up a community.
I have advised these 3 people that in the case of the Mod Squad being formed it would be in their best interest to create a new account/identity so as to avoid any personal retaliation against them from their activities from disgruntled people they had to warn or ban for various reasons
The mod squad would be there to do a job and their presence would NOT be an indication of approval or vetting by the BCHF.
**Social Media Management**
Similar to running a project’s community moderation, a possible revenue stream could be managing a project’s social media. Finding trusted people who will not burn everything to the ground can be difficult. Finding trustworthy people who know how to manage all the platforms while also having a deep understand of how BCH works is even more difficult. The BCHF could fill in that roll to help both the BCH projects and BCH itself by using that income to help offset the cost of public goods.
**FUNDING**
All of the above proposed activities could be done slowly over time by a group of disconnected and disorganized random people. Or relatively quickly in an organized and ongoing manner. For the BCHF to do these things and grow it needs to either do an annual funding drive via flipstarter or direct appeals to whales/organizations or it needs to have its own income or perhaps a combo. The moment money enters the equation it raises questions and rightfully so.
Once you are paid by X it complicates things and objectivity. If the BCHF relies on XYZ person or XYZ project for the entirety of its survival the BCHF is beholden to XYZ and their desires or the faucet gets cut off and the BCHF dies. Hopefully BCH is done with contentious splits and is a non issue but it is impossible to predict.
Likewise donations are unpredictable. At the time of writing the BCHF has received about 4BCH total in donations. This does not even begin to come close to covering the cost of expenses I have paid so far for hosting etc, let alone compensating anyone for their time. Even if random donations were 10x in frequency and amount it could not be counted on. It is hard to hire staff when you can not guarantee a monthly income for them.
For this reason I think it would be best to do a hybrid. The funds raised in an initial flipstarter would go to ensuring 1 full year of work, which could be considered a “bootstrapping”. While at the same time developing both public goods for BCH that everyone can benefit from for free and also some efforts that can generate income for the BCHF to expand efforts and help with sustainability/stability.
Merchandising Merchandising Merchandising!
The BCHF can in collaboration with creators like Swagme.cash sell general BCH and BCHF branded merchandise. It is unlikely such a venture can fund all the activities above but it is an option that may help.
A fourth option is an ICO/NFT!
We sell BCHF tokens and you get a digital keepsake that has no utility or function or promise. Its just a souvenir! I am not a huge fan of creating a funding token/NFT but if people would feel more inspired to fund the BCHF knowing they can get a digital keepsake in the process I am willing to go down that road similar to PBS or NPR and the tote-bags they give out. The BCHF will however not be creating a dex or game or farm or other similar defi activities.
No matter what the way forward is, the BCHF is committed to full transparency and accountability and will commit to a regular report schedule of the collection and use of whatever funds we acquire. Many previous public good type efforts have failed due to the fluctuation in BCH price and/or exchange collapses. All funds raised to bootstrap the BCHF will be put into BCH Bull contracts. Every Satoshi spent will be accounted for a publicly available information published every quarter to start.
Thank you for reading this short novel. Happy Halloween and happy White Paper Day! I look forward to your feedback. Feel free to write below or contact me via any platform @cheaplightning.
How to create #CashTokens on BCH in 13 easy steps
****DISCLAIMER the original author of this guide is not me and wishes to remain anonymous so I am positing it on their behalf.****
1.) Go to https://cashonize.com/ and create a new wallet.
2.) Send a few Sats to your new wallet to pay for fees.
3.) Go to CreateTokens and type in the total supply you wish to have.
Now you will see that the tokenID appears
4.) Copy the token ID and move on to https://bcmr-generator.netlify.app/.
****DO NOT CREATE THE TOKEN YET!****
5.) Insert the copied "Planned tokenID" into TokenID.
6.) Now we go to https://ipfs-bch.pat.mn/ and upload our Icon!
NOTE: "All submissions must reference a square, static icon to represent the token. Transparency is supported, and icons should be suitable for display against both light and dark backgrounds. Acceptable formats are SVG, AVIF, WebP, or PNG; SVG is recommended. For raster formats, the size must be 400px by 400px."
7.) Click upload local file and choose your icon.
8.) Now scan the QR code or copy the information below to pay for your upload. (0.0025BCH)
9.) Copy the link shown at "Your file is immediatly available at: …. "and go back to the BCMR Generator.
10.) Insert the link for your Icon at "Link Icon" and insert other missing Information. Add additional links if you want and "Download BCMR json file".
11.) Now we go back to IFPS-BCH and upload our BCMR file.
Click upload local file and upload the just downloaded json file and repeat as before.
12.) Now copy the link given after paid upload and we go back to our Cashonize wallet!
Copy the link to your BCMR file into field shown but remove https:// before, as stated in Cashonize info text.
13.) Click CREATE and your new token will appear under "MyTokens". It may take a few seconds until your icon appears!
There you have it!
It's a Fucking Scam?
So you want to get rich quick eh?
This is not for you.
Here you will find a check list of things to help you not throw your money in the fire.
**Please copy and paste this list below in any telegram group or reddit thread with or without answers to help people know more about the project. Avoid personal attacks, just focus on the simple, provable facts.**
Have a suggestion for this list? Please contact CheapLightning to get it added.
Does it have utility some day in the future instead of NOW?
YES/NO
Is the totality of their work something someone on fiverr.com could have done in 10 minutes?
YES/NO
Are they leveraging the brand of an established project (Doge, Elon, Nike etc)?
YES/NO
Is their site filled with logos of projects they have no connection to?
Evidence ______________________________
Are you sure they are who the claim to be?
Evidence______________________________
Does anyone you trust have a negative opinion on the project/team?
YES/NO
Did you notice they do not actively participate in the community?
YES/NO
Do they have no established history in the community?
YES/NO
Do they spam their project/self constantly?
YES/NO
Do they prefer to move all discussions to DMs?
YES/NO
Do they lack a business model?
YES/NO
Does their roadmap sound like bullshit?
YES/NO
Do they promise to help the homeless/animals/children/charity?
YES/NO
Does the scope of their project seem **un**realistic compared to their team size and skill?
YES/NO
Does the amount of money involved seem **un**reasonable for what the project is?
YES/NO
Does the amount of money involved seem **un**reasonable for the size/skill of the team?
YES/NO
Is the (especially money handling) code private?
YES/NO
Did anyone you trust check the code?
YES/NO
Do they promise to do doxing or accountability AFTER they raise funds?
YES/NO
Do they get combative or evade questions about the project?
YES/NO
What evil can they do?
___________________________________
Do they proclaim to have inside special knowledge that you have no way of knowing or proving or religious/spiritual powers or connections?
YES/NO
Hmmmm
On Mercenaries and Grifters.
Should you fund or support X?
First and foremost Bitcoin is for everyone. Literally everyone. For BCH to succeed it has to be for everyone, including people you do not like and even those that wish to harm you.
Your boss, clowns, the commies, the reds, the blues, the rainbows, the thin blue line, people that cut in line, your mother in law and even your ex-girlfriend that never returned your favorite hoody - are all people you have to be OK with using Bitcoin Cash.
You can not ban anyone or any group from using BCH, nor should you be able to. It does not mean you need to support, promote or amplify any group or individual that uses BCH that you do not see eye to eye on about other things. Someone using BCH in some way should not be seen as an automatic free pass into your good books.
There are people who very much want to free you from the burden of your BCH bags and your most precious resource - TIME. I think it is important to remain diligent and vigilant and remember that people have all kinds of motivations which may or may not align with what you personally want to see happen.
It is probably a good idea to focus on two types of people that often come knocking on the BCH community's door asking for money to better understand them and decide if you should indeed support them financially and otherwise.
Beyond people IN the community who actually intend to do the thing they set out to do, in the wilds of flipstarter you may encounter 2 other kinds of people.
**Mercenaries and Grifters**
While both kinds of people have no attachment to the community, they are actually drastically different.
**The Mercenary**
The hired gun, the "soldier of fortune". This is the person that knows how to do a job and can get it done........ for a price.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a mercenary or hiring a mercenary. It could be argued that the vast majority of the workforce of Earth are all mercenaries.
The person making your fries and burgers is not deeply ideologically aligned with the golden arches and what they stand for. They do a task that needs to be done and receive compensation for doing so.
There are, without a doubt, people in the world that can offer services that will benefit BCH and the community for a price while at the same time having Zer0 concern or interest in the future of BCH itself. This is totally fine and as long as they deliver what they promise, they should continue to be supported as participants in the peer to peer electronic cash economy.
If you think about it, the average person earns their wage in some fiat and most likely takes little interest in the economy of their nation as long as prices are relatively stable. If they are able to earn enough gold-pressed latinum to survive and it maintains its value they are happy as a clam.
This is the nature of business and you had better get used to it because if all goes well, you are going to see a lot of it.
According to your own morals or ethics however, when presented with 2 similar choices you may choose to support the option that lines up with your own views.
You see this with various business products as well. Ethical Fair Trade products etc.
Thinking in BCH land though an example would be choosing to support a merchant that only accepts BCH payments vs a more general "crypto" accepting merchant as they will have a more positive effect on the BCH ecosystem over all and it may even be worth it for you to pay a premium to support them. This is the same when it comes to deciding who to support. Do you support the less experienced person who is deeply involved and dedicated to BCH or do you invest in the person who has more experience and can get the job done but you can not count on to be around in the future?
**A mercenary is not someone you can trust with keys to the kingdom.**
At the end of the day the mercenary is best suited to short term projects that do not require upkeep or a long term commitment. They will be moving on to the next project and the next highest bidder for their time. For a one off project, a logo or a tutorial video, sure, why not? For vital infra? Maybe no..
The second type of person we need to discuss however is a bit more sinister .
THE GRIFTER
To put it simply the dictionary says a grifter is: "a person who swindles another out of money".
The thing about con-men is they are generally good at extracting money from others using all kinds of tricks. There are of course grifters of all levels though and some are quite easy to spot even from several hundred kilometers away.
Unlike a mercenary who actually delivers on their promises, a grifter will offer you the world for a seemingly reasonable price and then never deliver or worse will partially deliver... then say they delivered while then telling you the next big plan they have that will be even more successful!
There are several things I have noticed over the years that to me at least stick out as red flags and you should consider the following points when trying to identify whether this person who is asking for your time/money is or is not a grifter. (this is not an exhaustive list and I will update it from time to time.)
They talk about "crypto" all the time. Their flipstarter or pitch will probably talk about BCH a little but in general they will mostly talk about "crypto" and how their plan will enable people to use "crypto". I read this as "please bootstrap my thing and then once it is ready I will drop BCH like a stone and pivot my thing to the wider 'crypto' market to get more hard money". Kiss your money goodbye.
They offer no accountability. They will have fuzzy or no dates of delivery. They will also offer no timeline for updates.
The expenses they list do not really make sense. A dev probably already owns a PC and relevant software. A photographer probably already owns a camera. A delivery driver probably already owns a vehicle. Unless the point of the flipstarter is to fund the education of a person or a career change, I would expect a professional to already posses the basic tools of their trade and would not expect a flipstarter to include expenses for those basics. This can get a bit tricky and requires a bit of digging as well. If the personal/company/group is not already a professional with the basic tools for the task then you should probably have low expectations as far as what they will deliver in the end.
Similar to #3, the wages they choose to pay themselves and their team should line up with not only a realistic amount of work but with a wage that makes sense for their location. This also takes a bit of research but if for example the flipstarter is for an onboarding campaign and it includes a budget of $300US per person per day and the average wage of the country is $1 an hour... that is a red flag.
There have been several instances now as well where a new person comes to the community with a splash of something that looks good for BCH, just as quickly they fire up a flipstarter and ask for a bunch of money to continue their efforts...... then PooOooooof! They disappear. If they are new to the community and are asking for money before talking to anyone... do not expect them to stick around.
They interact with the community at large but only to talk about and promote themselves. They may be on reddit/twitter or in some of the Telegram chats but they never interact with people or join conversations..... unless it connects directly to them or the thing they want to ask money for.
Similar to above not only do they not join ANY general conversations, they spam their campaign among all the channels including completely unrelated specific channels. The BCH Meme channel is not the place to spam your flipstarter... unless you are doing a meme contest and want to raise funds for it via flipstarter.
When they announce their campaigns they mention or tag people who are not involved in the project. Most likely to name drop or solicit donations from whales or people who have been generous in the past.
Anyone can use any name on a flipstarter for donations, if you see a whale's name on the list of donors... but the whale donated 0.0001%.... it is probably fake and just being used to give people confidence in the project. "Well if Mrs. Whale is a donor... it must be vetted!" (it hasn't been).
They are generally unwilling to answer simple questions about their campaign or worse they get combative when asked. If a person is coming to the community asking for money but then gets angry when you as for some clarification... stay far far away. They should be happy to answer reasonable questions without resorting to calling you a CIA agent hellbent on destroying BCH with your incessant need for basic facts.
They are biting off more than they can chew. They promise the moon but have no realistic way to deliver or worse misrepresent what is possible. If the campaign is to "Pump BCH price 10%" or some other similar statistic but the meat of the campaign does not address the steps needed to make this possible.... what are you actually paying for?
They bathe in the drama. If the influencer that raised money to make BCH content is ignoring the good news and developments but is quick to ~~report on~~ make content that is negative about BCH, they are probably mostly interested in getting clicks and views to grow their followers above all else and not actually interested in helping BCH grow.
They post low effort memes and content on reddit usually with a mix of "What is chain tip?", "is chain tip down?", "Roger/Mark de Messel are gods" type posts with a smattering of chatGPT text for good measure.
They avoid publishing their flipstarter in major community spaces like r/btc and the BCH TGs to avoid scrutiny or feedback but specifically tag whales when announcing.
No prominent / influential community members are supporting it. If no one wants to touch this thing... there may very well be some history or good reasons as to why that is. It is possible the person running the flipstarter has not reached out or marketed very well. So this is not a great indicator. But if they are out there spamming their campaign across every channel and tagging Roger, Kim Dotcom, Elon Musk, your mom, and yet no one wants to contribute...
The above points do not equal a guaranteed scam/grift but are yellow/red flags especially if you see multiple of the above points connected to the same source.
If you think of any other RED FLAGS please feel free to comment them down below.
Be careful out there.
Now that twitter is dying lets all use Noise more.
What happens if someone I do not follow @ mentions me?
No Cat GIFS
No Life.
Did you stretch today?
Meow
The Resolution of the smartBCH Experiment.
Following in a long line of poorly aged posts proclaiming the resolution of various bitcoin experiments I shall continue the tradition with this post about smartBCH. I hope that this post will also age poorly and that I will quickly be proved to be wrong. https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7 https://medium.com/@vinarmani/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-community-experiment-99cf751d1588 https://medium.com/@_unwriter/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-cash-experiment-52b86d8cd187 https://medium.com/digitalassetresearch/the-resolution-of-the-big-block-experiment-e1df3e38d03f https://www.taal.com/blog/2020/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-tokenization-experiment/
**Where did we go wrong?**
The very thing that people warned about and were most worried about happened.
Whether through incompetence or malice the central point of failure failed.
It was not unimaginable. Many people warned about it and rightfully so refused to move funds over to smartBCH from mainchain. Others, like myself, moved over a manageable risk amount hoping and trusting that people smarter and above us in the food-chain did their due diligence.
They did not.
There has been a long string of failures that lead us to where we are now. If smartBCH is going to survive it needs to overcome and move beyond the thinking that lead to these failures. If smartBCH does not survive then it is important the broader BCH community reviews or learns from this experience.
**Smoke filled rooms**
SmartBCH is of course a project built on top of BCH. This also of course means that any major issues or failures connected to smartBCH do not necessarily harm mainchain in meaningful way.
Bitcoin's history is filled with drama caused by "meetings" where only certain people were invited to decide the future of the project. "The Hong Kong Agreement", “New York Agreement”, "the dragons den", the CTOR CSW explosion meeting and the IFP pre-approval meeting.
Mainchain has thankfully moved onto the CHIP process where everything is discussed and workshopped out in the open. https://bitcoincashresearch.org/
smartBCH has yet to develop immunity to these kinds of smoke filled room agreements.
At some point coinFLEX and the smartBCH team agreed to do various things, the details were never public and we collectively trusted the people we thought would do their due diligence to make sure all the pieces were in place to keep the network safe and secure. As far as I can tell no one ever did.
The coins were held by "fireblocks" which as far as I understand is a fancy term for "custodial multisig wallet". Who were the signers? No idea.
It did not end there though. When all the BCH backing smartBCH was moved, Mark said he informed the smartBCH team but of course this was not made public and when all the coins moved a small panic ensued. We still have no idea why they were moved.
According to coinFLEX, they had a secret deal with Roger Ver to allow him to make special trades that the public would never be allowed to do which is what ended up allegedly tanking coinFLEX. This agreement is also not publicly available.
We all learned fairly recently about the existence of a "smartBCH Foundation". Its members, goals, purpose, power and funding all shrouded in mystery. Mark is dealing with them on some level and they seem to not be directly connected to the smartBCH team. I have nothing but questions as to how all of this is going to work.
Development itself seems to be done in a similar way with what is being worked on and why and the status of things opaque until randomly a tweet or Telegram message appears that some new thing is done and out.
While there are several smartBCH groups focused on the current crisis, as far as I can tell things are still mostly decided somewhere else in private. There are several possible solutions to the current smartBCH crisis. I have heard rumors and speculation and even plausible accounts from people with first hand knowledge. But suffice it to say, I have no actual idea what the path forward is, which goes to one of my main complaints:
**Communication**
For the past year I have suggested then asked then pleaded and finally begged for something to be done about communication. I think while I have had direct contact with the team, its not fair to say that I have been an "insider" as while I may have been privy to an extremely limited number of things going on in the background, the vast majority of the time I too have been clueless as to what is actually going on even learning about most things at the same time as the public. I made several proposals to the smartBCH team as to how we/they could solve this issue. But as far as I know none of those suggestions have been taken to heart.
As far as communication between the development team and the moderation team:
Generally speaking we were not given advance warning of anything until the moment of publication. Obviously the community has some expectations about moderators being able to answer some basic questions about things and we were often caught off guard.
At some point in the early days a very vocal critic was unhappy about the moderation of the smartBCH community channel and complained directly to the smartBCH development team. Which in itself I have no issue with at all and in fact I recommend anyone do so when they see what they believe to be corruption. However the result was that a new moderator was added with no warning or communication with the rest of the mod team. I am sad to say the addition of another person without any warning was not an isolated incident. Of course at the end of the day the smartBCH project and its community moderation should be decided by the leaders of the project. Dr. Wang is the owner of the channel and he is free to add or remove anyone he pleases. I do however also think that a successful moderation team needs to be on the same page and haphazardly throwing in new random people to a position of power can cause more issues than it solves and should be discussed with the people that are already on the team. https://read.cash/@CheapLightning/oh-no-evil-mod-x-has-taken-over-my-favorite-telegram-group-what-should-i-do-1b2d3822
For smartBCH to succeed, users, developers and investors need to have confidence in the network.
I do not believe there can be any level of confidence if even basic information is not available.
At the moment there is no one to answer those questions. For smartBCH to be treated as a serious project it needs to put a much stronger emphasis on communication.
**Among the things I proposed to help with communication I proposed the following:**
*1. The creation of a paid community manager position with the following responsibilities:*
*Leadership role in community moderation duties, including the selection of other moderators for both volunteer part-time and paid full-time positions.*
*Tipping community members who do something extremely helpful.*
*Co-ordination with other smartBCH projects for promotional efforts both off and online.*
*Outreach to crypto media and projects.*
*Expanded social media presence.*
*This person does not have to be me of course. Anyone qualified should take that role. But I think it is super important to take this project and its community seriously.*
*2. The creation of a comms channel on TG or Discord where the smartBCH dev team and both English and Chinese community leaders can share information and general updates and status reports on a regular basis as well as coordinate.*
*3. The establishment of regular meetings with the above parties either weekly or bi-weekly so that communication is consistent across all channels and teams.*
*4. The expansion of the mod team for the smartBCH community group. At the moment, with the loss of Peter, there is no one in the North American time zone.*
*5. Renewed focus on creating and establishing a presence on Discord.*
*6. A revamped smartbch.org with a FAQ section. SmartBCH is a project that has centralized development and an “official” webpage. While it does link to the whitepaper, it does not however present information in a user friendly way. SmartBCH also suffers from a lack of clarity as far as sharing of information. Updating the smartBCH.org website to include a FAQ as well posting all the updates Dr. Wang makes. At the moment if you want the latest information you have to search read.cash or telegram. The first impression of people evaluating smartBCH is most likely going to be the .org website. It needs to be great not just OK.*
*Potential questions for a smartBCH FAQ*
*How does one run a node?*
*Do nodes get fees?*
*How does one become a validator?*
*Do validators get fees?*
*How do validators make proposals?*
*How do validators vote?…...*
*7. Make binaries available for smartBCH. Making things as easy for people to run smartBCH should strongly considered.*
I have no idea if any of the above suggestions to help with communication will be taken seriously but these are all just 1 example of many of the suggestions that I have made over the past year.
**Staff shortages**
There seems to be a trend of rushing to release things in the web 2.0 way of thinking. “Move fast and break things” worked well when VCs were pouring money into centralized platforms. In my opinion this way of thinking is a disaster for the P2P economy, when your “investors” are also your end users. SmartBCH relies on the end users putting their very real limited funds into the platform.
If users can not trust smartBCH to be reliable, the project is dead.
My understanding is that when the project was launched, coinFLEX volunteered to be custodian and promised to do many things that were never done. My own interactions with Mark both publicly and privately follow the same pattern of him promising to provide information and then because of trust no one followed up and deadlines passed without question. Of course the breaking of promises and trust lays squarely with both Mark and coinFLEX however there was also a massive failure of the smartBCH team to hold Mark to his word, follow up and verify. I can only assume that this was not seen as a priority and that the team was already overworked with technical development, or was more interested in making small tools and innovations that the task of trust and safety was not assigned to another party or no other staff was available.
As far as I know the smartBCH team currently consists of 3 fulltime developers. For smartBCH to succeed the team NEEDS to be expanded. Dr. Wang may be the most brilliant developer in human history. I am not a developer myself so I can not judge that. I do however know that he is not able to be lead developer, project manager, webdev, quality control, Telegram moderator, Discord moderator, spokesman, PR person, promoter/marketing, tech support, biz dev, accountant, lawyer, security, writer, coordinator, dapp dev, social media manager and spiritual leader all at the same time.
The mess we are currently in may have been prevented if there had been more eyeballs available to ask the important questions like "who controls what?" and act on them in a meaningful way.
SmartBCH needs to have room to grow. It needs fertilizer. It needs help. Help can come in the form of more help. Help like:
A dedicated project manager.
A dedicated community manager.
A dedicated PR/Media/Spokesperson.
Or at the very least someone who can 2 or even do all three.
The chain doesn't matter at a technical level if the users (projects, etc.) aren't taken care of and this area is largely ignored.
At some point in the future the fate of smartBCH can be decided by a DAO or foundation or similar. But at this juncture I really feel that the social and perception side of smartBCH has been ignored to an almost suicidal level and it has to be remedied as soon as possible. This goes along with what I wrote about communication above.
**Ass out of U and Mption**
We all fucked up. By that I mean the royal we. We all assumed someone bigger and smarter was doing due diligence. We assumed that Mark and coinFLEX were going to put all the checks in place to ensure that our money wouldn't be included in a melt down like it is. We assumed that the smartBCH team did its due diligence and was part of the multisig etc. We assumed funds were safu.
We were all wrong and without a massive cultural shift at smartBCH H.O. smartBCH is doomed to repeat the same mistakes it has before.
I forget who it was, but when I was much younger someone said to me:
"You can't date the person you hope they become, you can only date the person they are now."
I extend that advice now to people in general. I HOPE the people at the top make the choices that take the project down a better path but at the moment I see no evidence of that.
I do not write any of this with any intent to hurt anyone, my only desire since day one has been for smartBCH to be a huge success.
**On a Personal Level**
For the last year, since smartBCH launch, I have dedicated almost every waking moment to smartBCH as a volunteer sanitary engineer and to help facilitate and coordinate between teams and people. I never intended for "modding" to become a full time job. There was 1 community moderator who was clearly overwhelmed and almost no policies or countermeasures in place to combat the influx of spam and bots and scams. So similar to BCH channel, I saw "someone" needed to take care of the "mess" and I volunteered to Dr. Wang and he accepted. I was not alone and soon a team of volunteers formed. https://read.cash/@CheapLightning/how-to-earn-your-stripes-20833d40
Obviously it is impossible to make everyone happy and there have been some people who very vocally were not happy with how I carried out my volunteer duties. But I am pretty confident in saying that despite what ever flaws I may have, few if any other people would be willing to spend the amount of time I did basically non stop 6-12 or sometimes more hours a day for 365 days for free.
I do what I do because I want BCH to succeed and rightly or wrongly believed that in the moment helping smartBCH and smartBCH projects succeed was the best thing I personally could do to help BCH.
I made the choice to turn down lucrative job offers and even to not work on my own various projects because I thought in the end my time would be better spend helping the community, much more so than making memes or NFTs or even my more serious and ambitious projects. I am 100% responsible for my own actions and blame no one other then myself for going down that road. I did so hopeful that my limited energy would be best spent doing what I did.
As far as I know, the fate of the entire smartBCH project is up in the air and I am no longer convinced it is the optimal use of my time especially as far as what will help BCH the most.
Baring some significant changes, I am no longer interested in being a mod of the smartBCH community and have resigned. I have turned over ownership of the smartBCH developers TG and Moderators TG to Dr. Wang and wish him the best for the future and truly and genuinely hope that smartBCH is able to succeed.
Oh no! "Evil Mod X" Has Taken Over My Favorite Telegram Group! What should I do?
Imagine the following scenario:
The moment you have dreaded upon is here.
Your beloved Telegram channel or subreddit has been taken over by Evil Mod X and/or the mods have sold their accounts and gone evil, what do you do?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOdjV2PVs08
1. **First, take a deep breath.**
We have to be sure they are evil and not just having a bad day.
Is their behavior consistent and regularly evil?
It may be time to politely escort them out.
Is their tone completely different? Did they use to promote only BCH but now they only seem interested in and promote HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JSIAx5jBNI
There is decent chance they sold their account and again it is time to escort them out.
2. **Alright then... second we need to make sure you are not an asshole.**
Did you stop and ask yourself, AITA? https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/
If it never occurred to you that you could be just an asshole or you immediately discounted the idea that you could even possibly be an asshole... you very well might be an asshole and need to to look inward for a bit.
Even if you did before, lets take another moment to really look in the mirror and see if the troubles you are having are in fact not just you being an asshole.
Ask yourself right now AITA?
Deeply consider all the events that lead up to the point where you need to consider taking action against the moderator(s) and consider the reactions of the people whom were not directly involved in the drama. Did they seem to be on your side of the debate? Was it split 50/50? Were they generally silent? Did they also "attack" you like Evil Mod X? Consider a bit the answers you just gave.
Since you have double checked with yourself and confirmed with yourself that you are indeed not an asshole, its time to move on to outside sources.
That means you are going to have to talk to some other people. People you know and have a trusted relationship with and also people you do not know and do not have a relationship with.
If at this point you are so confident that whatever grievance you have with said mod (they thumbs downed your post, they did not support your plan or idea, they banned or restricted your account, etc.) that you do not need to seek outside council.... bad news, you are probably the asshole.
There is no easy solution to stop being an asshole. It takes a lot of self reflection and effort to correct this kind of a problem. But as with most things, with enough focus and energy you can certainly pull through. Just like quitting smoking or chronic masturbation, if you really want to change and it is super important to you, sheer willpower will carry you most of the way and being open and honest about your problem with yourself and others will amass you enough support to push you over the finish line.
If the idea of seeking council outside yourself or close friends does not bother you, congratulations! You may not be an asshole and may actually have a case and we can move on to step 3..
3.
Next it may be a good idea to take your grievance to not only your friends but trusted people in the community, privately, and ask them if they have noticed anything about Evil Mod X without first laying out your concerns. This will help to make sure they are impartial and also help you confirm the problem exists outside of your head.
If when asked, these people express similar concerns, it is pretty clear that there is a problem that needs to be dealt with and you can move on to step 4, making a plan of attack. If your friends and the trusted community members did not see these problems in advance, it does not mean they do not exist, it just means they did not see them for whatever reason. At this point you should probably ask these people if you are an asshole and lay out the things you saw/experienced and listen to their feedback WITHOUT trying to convince them you are right. This part of the process is just evaluation and making sure you are correct. The last thing we want to do is harm the reputation/business/project of someone due to false accusations.
If after listening to your story these people agree with you, it may indeed be time to move onto a course of action.
4.
Since we have reached step 4 it is pretty clear to you at the very least that SOMEONE needs to do SOMETHING about this Evil Mod X. But what can be done and who is going to do something? Luckily since we have already reached step 4 it is pretty clear that the SOMEONE is you. But the something is still not clear. What can you do? There are several options. Different social media platforms have different power structures (owners vs admins vs moderators etc.) But luckily methods of change are similar.
https://read.cash/@CheapLightning/how-to-earn-your-stripes-20833d40
**Scenario A**: If the person in question is the **Owner** of the group/channel/account and they are indeed evil there is not much you can do to initiate change. If their motivation is truly evil there is little chance words will convince them to abandon their scheme. If they are using a platform such as Reddit or Telegram you can attempt to contact the platforms own police squad to have them shut down. If they are running a scam or doing something illegal/immoral it should be relatively easy to have them canceled. If however the problem with them is that they removed people from their groups/channels for whatever reason.. you are probably shit out of luck. They are King/Queen of their nation and rights are granted and taken away from you at their leisure. You can have no expectation of rights or freedoms. It is an unfortunate reality.
If the above is true, your only real solution is to SPLIT and form a parallel or alternative group/community. This takes a lot of work and effort. Network effect is a really difficult thing to build naturally. Humans tend to lean towards whatever is the most popular or trending at the time.
This is also the story of BCH so you are in good company. BCH continuing to thrive and grow and develop is a testament to how this solution is valid. Trimming off the fat and casting off corruption allows you to be both agile and focused. People with similar thoughts and alignments will join you in your new group assuming you have the strength and will to push for it and take it to the next level. Do not worry. If your cause was righteous, the others that join you will be happy to take some of the burden off your back to propel you and the community even further!
Scenario B: Evil Mod X is not owner and is just staff. This is the more likely scenario and has the greatest chance to fixable. There are a few variables that come in to play that may make this harder for you but there is still hope.
If Evil Mod X is good friends with the owner of the group/channel then it will be a bit more difficult but not impossible. Any reasonable owner will listen to the entire community up in arms about one of their staff. Going to the owner and complaining without an impartial advocate will probably not help your case though as the owner will most likely trust Evil Mod X more than rando DM person out of the blue. It may also work against you as they are busy people and are probably tired of daily random DMs. Assuming there is a group of mods, the other mods however may be your best ally at this stage. They may also have noticed that Mod X has become Evil Mod X and be working behind the scenes to convince owner they are a bad dude. If this is the case, REJOICE! The other mods will probably do most of the work for you!
Pass on whatever evidence you have gathered and be done with it. Mission accomplished!
If the other mods do not agree with you, you can work to build community consensus that Evil Mod X is a problem and should be removed from their position. This will take time and effort as well. But it is something you need to weigh for yourself. If you can preserve the network effect and community it may be worth putting in that effort vs starting a new group/channel at 0 and convincing people to move over to your group.
**Scenario C:** Give up.
Volunteers
Please try to remember a lot of us especially in the BCH space are volunteers. We do what we do because we want BCH to become money for all of humanity. I explained in a previous post why I do what I do. As you can see above from the sample of some of the things written about me there is a lot of criticism and negativity. Sometimes it gets to be a bit much when in your own brain you know you have dedicated yourself and time and effort to something at great personal and financial cost and for free. Cats have feelings too. We mods are trying our hardest to do what we think is right. There is always room for improvement and if the mod you think is actually Evil Mod X did something you think is terrible, why not DM them your concerns? Maybe you read something wrong, maybe their native language is different than yours. Maybe it was a big misunderstanding and they were never Evil Mod X at all. https://read.cash/@CheapLightning/why-i-do-what-i-do-4b1af12c
Why I do what I do.
I am, for the most part a volunteer.
Most of the things I do in the space are of no direct benefit for myself and in fact (until this week) were very much in the red.
A non exhaustive list of my volunteer work:
I co-organize the Osaka, Japan BCH meetup which during covid was also the online Asia BCH meetup.. https://www.meetup.com/Osaka-Bitcoin-Cash-Meet-Up/
I co-organized the Osaka BCHxETH Devcon 2019 after party. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me3rleGGw7w
I am a moderator and/or creator of 21 BCH related Telegram channels which I spend many hours every day deleting a never ending stream of ever increasing in sophistication bots/spammers/scammers and answering legitimate questions when and where I can.
I moderate the (mostly dead) smartBCH discord (please join). https://discord.gg/nSxy4Akv
I am the creator of build.cash (whose flipstarter gloriously failed) which, while limited, was one of the first places that provided a tutorial on how to setup smartBCH as well as maintains the most comprehensive list of BCH related Telegram channels.
While I was originally brought on board just to manage Youtube/Zoom for the Bitcoin Cash Network discussions, I slowly became responsible for the summary videos and the ELI5 write ups. This then ballooned into hosting and even the organization of it. I by no means am doing it all by myself but I think it is fair to say that the project would struggle or even die without me now. https://www.youtube.com/c/BCHNetworkDiscussion/videos
A lot of what I do, most people will never see, which is networking and facilitating communication between various people and groups. I am not sure what to call this, perhaps a “consultant”. But to give you a somewhat recent example: People from Bitcoin.com contacted me to find out who was in possession of the “verse.bch” LNS domain. I then tracked down the owner through social and chain analysis and put them in touch with one another to work out the details of the acquisition. I do similar things very often. Someone has a question and I do my best to help them myself or to put them in touch with a person or people that can better help them. Connecting teams and people together. Reviewing things, and giving general advice.
I recently started investigating previously completed flipstarters to investigate if the recipient did or did not actually deliver what they promised.
I am sure there are many more things but these are just off the top of my head.
One of the very few times I interacted with CSW while he was around was when he wrote a tweet that said something to the effect “If you are doing it for free you are an idiot” to which I pushed back and asked “what about all the meetup organizers?”
His reply was clearly some weaselly worded rollback along the lines of "well you should sell merchandise or maybe charge admission". I disagree and am glad we shed ourselves of him fairly quickly.
Of course I hold a limited amount of BCH, I too would love to see "Number Go Up", and despite getting into Bitcoin in 2011 I am by no means a whale. I do of course believe that the high tide will raise all boats and with that I will benefit as well.
Value can be and measured in ways other than direct monetary gain. A whale who donates to BCHN or Satoshis Angels (or me) does so because they believe it will bring MORE value to the rest of their holdings. Imaginary Username lays it all out better than It can in the original proposal for flipstarter here. https://bitcoincashnode.org/en/ https://www.satoshisangels.com/angels-advisors https://read.cash/@im_uname/assessment-and-proposal-re-the-bitcoin-cash-infrastructure-funding-situation-3e5179fc
SOMEONE needs to all the things. We do not have a developer fund or a founders fund or a premine or a tax allocating 10% to a DAO that can be voted upon. The IFP failed. No matter whether you think we SHOULD have a foundation etc, we are where we are and BCH is a completely voluntary system. It is developed and propelled by for some profit and for others goodwill and a desire to make BCH succeed. https://t.me/+8EF_TKsopOFkYmE1
But why?
For some people the answer is very complicated and for some it is very simple:
BCH bags are heavy and they want to sell down the road to get a golden toilet on a diamond and barnacle encrusted yacht.
Personally I think there is nothing wrong with that, as long as the high tide also raises my canoe.
Satoshi was brilliant in incentivizing greed to keep the network secure. Profit motivation is valuable and plays a very important part in the network and I fault no one whose main motivation is their bottom line. For many of us early adopters though, the promise and appeal of bitcoin riches was not THE primary motivation.
While the BTC crowd seems to openly admit they have had a pivot, slowly disassociating the project from Satoshi and saying things like "it is time to move on" and "its time to rewrite the white paper" etc. I tend to see people in BCH as the people who are still motivated by peer to peer electronic cash.
On the surface it seems very simple. I send money directly to you, instantly and basically for free!
THE END
Well................................... Not for me.
It is a bit more significant than that.
For myself and many other BTC exiles the project known as "Bitcoin" is the project that gives humanity the best chance of moving away from the downward spiral many of us feel swirling around us. Hyperinflation, war, the honey bees all dying off.
It seems like everywhere you turn there is another broken system. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/825305756
Basic rights? Refugees? 2 parties? Leeman accountability? Season 8 of GOT? https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/11/lehman-brothers-collapse-where-are-the-key-figures-now
At the root of everything is money. The only way to reverse the course of action is to take the power away from those who make all these terrible choices and their power is control over the money supply.
The best way to wring control away from the broken and ossified hands of those who have no desire to make any real change is to change money itself.
Capitalism in it's current state is basically Proof of Stake (generational wealth) combined with centralized inflation.
It's a big club and you are not in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-54c0IdxZWc
We can do better and we must do better.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Be part of the solution.
Despite the mostly thankless task of being a volunteer mod. I have dedicated myself to the bitcoin project since 2017 when I discovered that I, a simple merchant can actually do something. I was a SOMEONE that can do SOMETHING. I started small, converting my store from BTC to BCH and participated in the OB Beta test and then graduated to co-hosting the Osaka BCH meetup. From there on it was a slow ramp up to where I am today which is basically volunteering fulltime on helping BCH projects because I think it is worth it for the future of our planet and the next planet. https://read.cash/@CheapLightning/oh-no-evil-mod-x-has-taken-over-my-favorite-telegram-group-what-should-i-do-1b2d3822 https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/saturn/overview/
The pandemic was kind of a double edged sword. On the one hand it basically ruined my business and eliminated my income. On the other it freed my time to focus on helping BCH projects. I threw myself into helping everything I could and never asked for anything in return because in the end I believe that by helping BCH I help everyone and I am someone. I did get the odd donation here and there which I of course appreciated. It was never substantial until this month though.
Someone gave me a massive tip. I am not sure who you are but whomever you are. I can not thank you enough. These last couple years have been hard for everyone, many much more so than myself and while I do not know who you are, I can only say thank you. I will keep doing what I am doing and try to help others as you have helped me.
I am proud and honored to be part of such a community that is to a large degree united or aligned with similar goals and motivations the stretch far beyond individual wealth.
I feel so much motivation and passion around me with the people I talk to everyday.
I have not been this hyped in a long time. I feel we have a real chance to pull this off.
We are building something that humanity has never see before. This thing we are building is new. It doesn't even have a name yet, emergent parallel power? Someone will coin a better name someday. I am excited to be building all this with you.
I can not wait to see what we come up with next.
How To Earn Your Stripes.
Bitcoin is a permissionless system.
You do not need the approval of anyone to join the community or to take part in the monetary revolution. In fact you are already a member of the Official Bitcoin Cash Foundation. https://read.cash/@CheapLightning/announcing-the-official-bitcoin-cash-foundation-5f360d84
You do not need a team or council or company to build the next big thing that is not only going to change the world and make you super rich AT THE SAME TIME!
What a lovely community to be a part of.
In case some of you are still on the fence and do not feel welcome yet:
BY THE POWERS VESTED IN ME BY GREEN SKULL I HERBY DEPUTIZE YOU AS AN OFFICIAL BITCOIN CASH AGENT WITH ALL THE POWERS AND AUTHORITY THEREIN!*
Now that is out of the way and you understand you are able to join the bitcoin community, I have some bad news for you.
**You can not force anyone to work with you.** You can not force anyone to listen to you or your ideas. You can not force any team to build the thing you want. Even if it is the best idea since fidget spinners.
This is all voluntary
Just like you do not need anyone to grant you the freedom or permission to make the thing you want, everyone has the freedom to ignore you.
"But I am new to bitcoin and no one is paying attention to me! I want to be included! I want to be an insider! I want to be one of the cool kids on the cool as a cucumber team!"
Recently in Telegram some people have said that our community is not really welcoming to "outsiders". While I disagree with this sentiment. I think it is more an issue with new as yet unproven ideas and projects meeting skepticism, part of the perception is no doubt due to the history of bitcoin and many people having PTSD from when new developers came in and pushed out Gavin Andreson and Mike Hearn and turned bitcoin upside down. I think people probably also have PTSD and are tired about having to listen to people making bold claims suck up all the oxygen in the room with drama trying to pull BCH into in a drastically different direction.
None of that matters at all though. You do not need me or anyone else to give you permission. Build your thing. Convince people your idea is amazing through demonstration and keep your emotions in check. If it is truly an awesome idea people will see it and support you for building it.
"OH SHIT! I HAVE TO BUILD IT?"
Yep.
Wait, you didn't expect me or someone else to run with your idea did you?
Ideas are a dime a dozen. Even good ones.
BCH Should.....
Someone Should......
The Community Should..........
The "someone" problem strikes again.
There is no shortage of ideas. They are not impressive. What is impressive is someone taking that idea and working on it.
Before you ask, no just talking to people about it is not really working on it. Gathering information and doing research for your idea sure.
I'll give you an example, an idea off the top of my head:
A game where you use NFT's to combine them together to make super NFT's. The more you combine them the stronger they get until at a certain date combining them is no longer possible and the final super NFT's can battle highlander style in a 0 sum game also with a deadline. By the end there can be only 1. This ultra NFT owner gets to keep the NFT and 50% of all minting profits.
Sounds great right? Well someone has to write the code. Someone has to make the art. Someone has to do the marketing. *$1 Billion dollars for my idea pweez.*
So while the idea is maybe amazing the hard part is everything else.
Bitcoin's very famous unofficial motto is "Don't trust. Verify"
This is a lovely thing about bitcoin. The code is all right there. You do not need to trust I sent you the money I promised. It is all there on the blockchain. You do not need to trust my word or my handsome whiskery face. You do not need my credit score. You do not need references or feedback. I sent the money or I did not and anyone can verify it.
Humans however are not code.
We require trust with one another. Trust is built over time. It is earned and not given. Actions also speak much louder than words. Writing on reddit or twitter or telegram will certainly help your name get known, but you should consider how you can contribute something tangible. There is no shortage of projects that need help and can make great use of all the help you can offer.
POW!
In bitcoin POW actually stands for "Proof of Work". This is the work that miners do to try to find the next block. The more work the miners do, the greater chance you have to be rewarded.
POW also applies to your street cred or trust. The more work you do, the greater the chance that people will see you and come to trust you.
**Anonymous**
This is also why being anonymous vs. DOXed or public is not really an issue in my opinion. No one knows who Satoshi really is/was. But we can verify the code to know bitcoin works as intended.
2 incredibly important people in the history and survival of BCH, freetrader and im_uname are both anonymous. It is their years of public and documented hard work that has built trust with the community. Not their faces or their passport photos. In our decentralized system filled with faceless people your work and your reputation are really all that matter. An anonymous person can theoretically rug and escape to the wind easier than someone who uses their real face/name. This is true. However it takes years or at least hundreds of work hours to build up a reputation and only seconds to destroy it all forever. Sure anyone can re-roll and try again. But it is normal to not blindly trust those we are unfamiliar with. So if you are a new faceless person. Have no fear you are in good company. All you have to do is demonstrate through your POW that you can, will and do follow through on the things you say you will do. If you say you are going to make a meme for a contest then do it. Probably no one is going to scrutinize you too much. If you make a token and want to sell it to the community.... well then now you are asking the community to give you money for something. Expect a bit more scrutiny. https://www.reddit.com/user/ftrader https://twitter.com/im_uname
Are you planning on building a bridge or a dex or run a flip starter and hope to get millions of dollars?
**Then you had best be prepared for exponentially more scrutiny and questions.** Don't worry though. If your project is truly awesome and you do your best to answer questions and be open about your project and code etc. you will be virtually hugged in no time by the whole community.
**Bitcoin cash has no leader. But that does not mean there is no leadership.**
There is a big difference between being a leader and leadership
Roger for example has without a doubt been a thought leader, an investment leader, a motivation leader and a leader in many other ways. He is not however the leader of BCH. He, as far as I know, does not control enough hashrate to dictate the consensus rules and is not a full node developer. He has made a number of requests to the node devs. Some of the things he has wanted have been added. Some have not. A request is not a command or decree and can be ignored. https://www.youtube.com/user/rogerver/videos
BCH is one of the very few projects that have shown the community is completely willing to eject the person or people that have accumulated the most power if they no longer are heading in the direction the community wants to go.
If you think BCH should or NEEDS to change direction. It is up to you to present compelling evidence and convince enough people to make those changes undeniable.
Declaring yourself a "leader" does not mean that people will automatically follow you. Some will. But without using force, coercion or bribes, the only way to get followers is to demonstrate your leadership ability by perhaps having a clear vision that is easy to follow and delivering on your promises.
The best and easiest way to earn your stripes is to say what you mean, mean what you say and prove it with action.
*certificates are available for $29.95 plus shipping and handling while supplies last.
Announcing The Official Bitcoin Cash Foundation
As of this day January 29 2022 and this time 6:06PM I hereby formally declare the official **Bitcoin Cash Foundation** formed and active and awesome.
**Congratulations!**
If you have used BCH you are already a member.
If you are a proponent of peer to peer electronic cash you are also one of the executives. There are a few million of us so we will have to take turns bringing snacks to meetings.
The rules are quite simple.
Use BCH
Encourage others to use BCH
That is all.
There are no annual dues. There are no membership fees.
There is no treasurer or treasury.
Actually…..
There is no secretary. There is no president. There are no headquarters.
There are however somewhat unified desires amongst a huge variety of people all over the globe.
Some of which include:
There is a desire to lift the unbanked into global finance.
There is a desire to transact freely across borders.
There is a desire to have a voice in how the economy works.
There is a desire to not have to trust governments or institutions with your own money.
There is a desire to be able to invest in something deflationary.
How do we grow as a foundation?
That is not as complicated as you might think. Trust your instincts and if you need help or advice feel free to ask the experienced. Do not be afraid to stand on the shoulders of giants or go out there and build, work and utilize this amazing tool that is free to use for anyone in the world who possesses a device that can connect to the internet.
You do not need the permission of me or anyone else to build or do your thing.
If you want to start a local meet up**, start a meet up.**
If you want to ask your local grocer to accept BCH in their store **go ahead and ask.**
If you want to design a game that uses CashToken NFTs to prove virtual land ownership, **do it.**
If you want to make BCH logo meme t-shirts... **get designing and selling**.
This is all up to you.
You are free to do whatever it is you want in the BCH SPACE but do not expect others to automatically jump on your idea...... To Be Continued..... https://read.cash/@CheapLightning/how-to-earn-your-stripes-20833d40
1 Million Dollars
The question was simple enough. I asked prominent BCH community members:
**If I had 1 million dollars to donate to BCH (the network not the coin) where do you think it would be best spent (projects, infra, etc) to help the network?**
I did not tell them beforehand I intended to publish their answers (though I asked after) so these are unpolished and mostly unedited (removed some identifying info). Their anonymous answers are below.
**1.**
*Probably split it between projects and marketing*
*BCH has never aggressively marketed. I would probably hire PR firms, craft a cohesive brand identity, get articles in the media, etc. PR firms do all of that*
**2.**
*Hiring people full time to shill.*
*NOT A PR FIRM OR MARKETING FIRM, OR A GEORGE*
*training a team of people who can shill on TG, Reddit, twitter, and send cold emails/dms to rich people all day long*
**3.**
*Wow hmm that’s tough. I really like the idea of cash fusion, seems to not really taken off, needs to be easier to use like in mobile wallets. Smart BCH could be something, maybe even marketing, we badly need better optics. I feel like node devs have gotten a lot of money over the years already. But sponsoring protocol devs should always be something that is done too.*
**4.**
*I would focus on new marketing combining the features of BCH/smartBCH. Unified high quality messaging ready at the same time we complete shagate.*
*That and more high quality projects*
**5.**
*Simplest answer: investing in businesses that have a BCH-specific use case.*
*There are longer answers though, especially re: infrastructure.*
*The HAAAARD part is finding or developing businesses that benefit from BCH. This is the largest challenge of crypto. Non-speculative use cases are a relative desert.*
**6.**
*For me, I think we need to fund projects/companies that will increase BCH usage as payment on all levels of the supply chain.*
*1. Fund payment processors and/or wallet projects that will facilitate paying / accepting BCH payments both online and offline.*
*2. Fund aggregator services (e.g. food delivery services) that accept BCH payments in behalf of partner merchants.*
*3. Fund projects/companies that make it easier for brick and mortar businesses to integrate BCH payments (e.g. POS & accounting systems, incentive programs, etc.).*
*4. Fund farms that produce fruits, vegetables, and meat that will accept BCH as payment and let these farms provide produce at a discount to BCH-accepting establishments.*
*Depends on BcH or sBCH? I think I’d generally put the money towards a marketing DAO, and some funds towards development of NFT infra*
*I think bch general is harder I guess I would just spend it in smartbch*
*I feel the issues on L1 bch are very hard to solve, eg if nodes don’t deliver*
*Not much more money can solve 🤔*
**7.**
*I personally still think the developer infrastructure (libraries and communications protocols mostly) is one of the weak links today. New developers who come in look at things and it looks quite bad - they might try bitbox only to learn that it's unmaintained, they might try some rest API and find that it's unstable, or they try something like libauth and find the documentation difficult. There is also a lack of good open-source wallets. Those can be tackled in two ways though, either reduce friction to make it enjoyable to work, or increase adoption/utility/value to create stronger incentives. Might be biased as lately I've been doing a lot of development and not a lot of other things, so that kindof colors my perspective.*
**8.**
*Marketing*
*All of it*
*That one million dollars in marketing to attract a 100 million*
*And then you invest 9 more in to marketing and another 25 in education*
*And you still have 64 mil left.*
**9.**
*Interesting question. I think I'd say building novel *online* applications on top of BCH would be the best thing. There's currently not a lot of projects / companies that have the funding to work on it full time so there's a lot of side projects but not a lot of main projects.*
*I also think the infra is lacking, but from what I've seen with GP, they've contributed a lot to the infra because GP needed to have certain things in order to build product. If there are more skilled and well funded teams that are building a specific product on BCH, they'll most likely also contribute to infra.*
*So I don't think that having dedicated infra companies (besides the node teams) is the way to go right now, but having more companies like GP would be very beneficial*
**10.**
*Bounties for devs porting over projects from BSC/ETH/AVA/SOL to SmartBCH (projects we dont have yet, like abracadabra.money, olympusDAO etc)*
*maybe*
**11.**
*I would put it in SmartBCH marketing / promotion - draw in new users (as that will lift up the entire network)*
*I would love to see a project that has the goal of delivering (and maintaining) something equal to this:*
*https://ethereum.org/en/*
*so we get a central point of information, for all users / devs etc.*
*Everything is really sharded atm, new people are struggling to find their way around I feel. Also we could use a bit more professional presentation (think whybitcoincash) - "you can only make the first impression once"*
*of course we need more infra etc - but I think the lowest hanging fruit is on the marketing side*
**12.**
*80% infrastructure, 20% UX*
*wait*
*no*
*51-49 UX and infra*
*but yeah*
*good infra means people can make good ux*
*good ux means more users*
*more users means better infra*
**13.**
*Advertisements, social media campaigns, etc.*
*Online, algorithmically targeted advertisements*
*Backed by a solid social media campaign*
*https://fifty.io*
*Probably ads through these guys, along with boosted posts.*
*And very competent social media managers/writers/strategists/a digital artist or two*
*You could fund a solid campaign for a couple months.*
*ROI would most likely be immense considering the current interest in DeFi and the speed/cost/robustness of SmartBCH*
**14.**
*Put down seed money as the start of an investment fund, go to roger and co and declare you want to lever up on that. get 30m total, make a grand announcement, and start screening startups to invest in.*
*if you don't want to go through the hassle of lawyering, possibly even just set it up as a big multisig.*
*then voila you have an onchain foundation.*
*recruit entrepreneurs. if you wish, nudge them to in turn fund infrastructure they think are important.*
*----if the lever up plan doesn't work, maybe the whales don't trust you or w/e----*
*start a networking organization. networking as in people networking, not literal computer networks. aggressively pursue talent and coordinate their capture entrance to bch organizations and companies. organize events to facilitate these as necessary.*
*note that if you can hit the magic number of 50m you can prolly single handedly cause bch to pump just by announcing the fund.*
*no other event can cause that.*
**15.**
*I think we have the biggest growth potential from getting real companies using BCH. SmartBCH has the best ability of doing this now, since the biggest grey-market market BCH can fulfill now is for borderless financing of projects. Projects that work towards a future where companies can raise $ outside of normal fiat is imho the best. So dexs, launchpads, and similar systems that bring us closer to that future.*
*I think crypto market is going to change drastically when reality of inflation hits much of world, still in honeymoon period where everyone thinks they are rich.*
**16.**
*Hmm, would prob have to better think about it but initial thought is lack of users is the biggest problem. Infra etc is important, but no point building the biggest, awesomest stadium in a town with 100 people in it. So probably focus on marketing and user adoption*
*that's almost a more infrastructure-level project, but the gamble could be worth it. just need to get off my ass and develop a time machine so i can do all this stuff. 😂*
*the bitcoin.com wallet + flexUSD for interest seems like a gem to draw average people into. some simple commercial-style youtube vids showing how easy it is to hold a 'dollar-pegged crypto' and earn bank-shattering interest rates on it for doing nothing - but also how they can get back to 'real' money. a million$ probably wouldn't go far in terms of actual TV commercials i'd guess, but youtube/streaming/socials/etc ads could use it and still reach a lot of people*
*we're trying to target twitch streams in a way that will get the viewers themselves involved in airdrop contests, rather than just giving the streamer donations, but requiring the user to be a subscriber so the streamer may get more $ from new subscribers just chasing the airdrops/contests. twitch viewers seems like a good audience - many won't be involved in crypto still (it's pretty niche overall in terms of actual users), but the audience is overall tech-savvy enough to help each other rather than walking grandma through backing up their recovery seed...*
*i dunno, more and more i'm seeing people discussing trying to organize to get projects going, finding funding, how to govern it etc.... a dao that took off could accomplish all that, definitely not a lack of people looking to fund things, and it would enable bigger companies like bitcoin.com, coinflex, etc. that want to help the ecosystem but not necessarily babysit the funds just donate 'to the dao' and have everyone vote on managing the funds.*
*that's almost a more infrastructure-level project, but the gamble could be worth it. just need to get off my ass and develop a time machine so i can do all this stuff. 😂*
**17.**
*setting up a physical city is hard and inconvenient and expensive*
*although that is part of what makes it so powerful when done*
*but the point is we're on a budget, and trying to build network effect among real people as cheaply as possible so instead of making a physical city, make a virtual one.*
*with 1 mil in budget, you can easily afford to hire 3 people in different timezones full time*
*their one and only job is to sit on a zoom call, which is a 24/7 BCH chat room*
*8 hours / day each*
*so that literally any time of the day or night, someone can go hang out and talk about BCH*
*whenever is convenient to their schedule*
*and anyone new to BCH can be directed by their mate who doesn't have time to go through everything with them to that link and they can check in at their own leisure*
*and have a friendly face to talk to and find out what's going on, get referred to more links and services etc.*
*you have 1 person on the payroll to kick it off, but that's just the seed*
*if the community know they can just be involved any time, they will be*
*the issue with meetups is that not everyone can fit it into their schedule or it's different timezones or whatever*
*with this it is 24/7*
*there is a ton of good things about this idea*
*1. very cheap to test. You can just start with 1 month, or even 1 week, and see if it works before committing to it further*
*2. organic conversations, ideas and commerce / interpersonal referrals will grow out of this*
*3. everyone in the community can feel a bit of community spirit any time they like*
*(get the employees to hang up a BCH flag in their room)*
*4. the 3 on-payroll employees is just to start and for simplicity*
*you can quickly incentivize participation and build up local crypto communities by taking the budget for that hour and sending it once per hour split among the people who have been there for at least an hour*
*so e.g. the hourly budget is $50 or whatever, if there's two people there then you each get $25 at the end of each hour*
*if there's five, it's $5*
*if it's 200, well this event is banging and paying out a few cents is the least of the issues*
*I'd do this for free, but people in poor countries looking to earn crypto literally could not have it any easier to get on the gravy train*
*and the incentive to join rises inversely to the number of people present, which is usually the opposite of conversation topics*
*or meetups or social events, which benefit from network effect*
*it would probably even be self sustaining, since it's easy enough to take community donations to keep it running*
*and I"m sure if it was popping off, people would*
*it's like a community airdrop or faucet*
*except without the usual airdrop problems, which is that people aren't engaged, and it's hard to stop spammers picking up all the cash*
*it's like face to face noise.cash*
*call it chat.cash*
*$20 / hour is $3360 / week*
*$174k / year*
*easily doable within the million budget*
*and you're not committing it all up front*
**18.**
*Ok so I’d get some crypto influencers to talk about bch on Tik tok, YouTube, etc*
*These things can create huge hype if done well and could bring awareness of the coin to a lot of people*
*Also hire some PR person for BCH itself*
*We need to look good, and make more noise!*
**19**
*Adoption, I will say. What would generate adoption from users not looking to make quick money, but become part of the ecosystem and stay part of it, increasing the network effect and generating value for everyone.*
**20.**
*It seems to me the infrastructure is being taken care of largely and wrap is lacking is good projects to build adoption, get new people to use the coin... which is not an easy task.*
**21.**
*Probably in projects that helps real companies move onto BCH. There is a lot of tooling to be built around this, this is one of the core components of MistSwap's long-term strategy as well.*
*There are basically 3 types of tokens now:*
*1. Financial products (like Mist token 🙂 )*
*2. Meme tokens*
*3. Games (ponzis included)*
*I think our biggest growth will come from #4 - real world companies. Like.. take a struggling hypothetical video game store, tokenize it, it gets a valuation of 1.5m.. they pay dividends and have shareholder meetings using DAO. I think once we can have this start happening (i.e. the tools are sufficiently well designed / made for normal people) there will be explosive growth and BCH is in best position to capture this market (the majority of real world market)*
*This is why I am excited about smartBCH, I think it has real potential to change the world in a positive way*
**22.**
*Marketing*
**23.**
*Projects or partnerships/integrations with existing platforms. User acquisition is most important imo.*
**There you have it.**
**Several people never responded. Several people have not yet responded when I asked for permission to publish, but as it has been several days I have decided not to wait any longer. I think the above answers are very interesting perspectives to consider.**
Build.Cash June 2021 Update
I have now successfully rearranged my work schedule to allow me to devote 1 day a week to Build.Cash. I believe the project is not only valuable but necessary for the future of Bitcoin Cash.
Even just yesterday in the largest Bitcoin Cash telegram group someone posted asking where can they find info.
If I can make this site work the answer will be easy. Build.Cash.
This will however be my final post about Build.Cash here though (unless its something meta).
From now on all updates and news will be posted at the new account I have created.
**Read.Cash:**
https://read.cash/@Build.Cash
Please subscribe to this account if you want further details.
I have also added all of my Read.Cash earnings from this account to the Build.Cash donation address as I assume the people that contributed to my previous posts wanted to see the project succeed.
https://explorer.bitcoin.com/bch/address/bitcoincash:qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js
I have also added a few other accounts that you can follow for updates if you like.
**Twitter:**
https://twitter.com/BuildDotCash
**Noise.Cash:**
https://noise.cash/u/BuildDotCash
**Reddit:**
https://www.reddit.com/r/BuildDotCash/
**Disney +**
Ok maybe not that one.
Thanks everyone for the support.
Lets Build a better Cash for the world!
The Future of Build.Cash
First and foremost I wish to thank everyone who was willing to make a pledge to the Flipstarter campaign last year. Despite the fact that the Flipstarter did not get funded the project will move forward in a limited capacity.
Getting funding for a project that does not exist beyond planning is quite a bit trickier than getting funding to continue an already active and successful project. It is the chicken and the egg. How does one know a thing is valuable to invest in if it does not as yet exist? How does it come to exist if no one invests in it? Someone has to take a leap of faith. A leap of faith that the project has value one way or another that will improve things. Someone.....
The total amount pledged to our Flipstarter was enough to cover the initial costs of setting the foundation of the project, however not enough to fully fund its development. That proved to me that there is enough interest to at least see it get off the ground and attempt to establish a useful resource that the entire community can benefit from.
I will be that someone and will be bootstrapping the start of Build.Cash myself. There are limits to my resources however and that means I will only be able to fund the development of the site itself which as written previously in the Flipstarter campaign was quoted at $2000 (plus the domain and hosting expenses etc.)
Accountability is one of the core purposes of the Build.Cash project and we intend to hold ourselves to the same high bar set by BCHN and have full disclosure.
The funds have already been moved to the Build.Cash address which will be the address where ALL Build.Cash related transactions from now on will be conducted from. https://explorer.bitcoin.com/bch/address/bitcoincash:qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js
I have sent 4.4 BCH to bitcoincash:qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js
Which at the time was worth $2288.97 USD and should be enough to cover the initial expenses. This does not include the cost of the domain or hosting which I have also been paying.
A Bit Of a Snag.
I was just informed today though that the WebDev that I negotiated with, will be unable to take on the project after all. So I am in the market for another webdev. If you happen to know anyone with experience in, and accepts BCH please let me know!
Despite this second setback I am pushing on!
My original intention was to have Build.Cash set up as an NPO here in Japan. I still hope to someday however that is not financially possible yet as the cost is beyond what I can personally afford at the moment.
The real value of Build.Cash will be it's content and more importantly its curation. While it is my hope that developers will eventually come to see the value in Build.Cash enough to make contributor accounts and update their own projects, it is unlikely that many will take the time to do so until Build.Cash has proven itself as a valuable resource.
What this means is that for the foreseeable future only 1 person will be responsible for all the research and data entry. This will be a very intensive labor of love and as it will be voluntary it means this due to the massive massive effort needed, progress will be somewhat slow.
I have also decided to dedicate one day a week to the project. As such I will be re-arranging my work week to allow for it starting this summer. I would very much like to work on it full time, however I can not afford to.
I think it is important to state that this is not in anyway a complaint. It is just a declaration of status. Honesty and accountability are at the very center of the core mission of Build and I think it is paramount that this project holds itself to the same standards.
Good things are coming! I am super excited to get this ball rolling.
Thank you.
If you want to help this project, donations can be made to:
bitcoincash:qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js
The Build.Cash First Flipstarter Postmortem
Sadly the Build.Cash Flipstarter campaign did not get fully funded. There are probably several reasons for this that can be explored. https://build.cash/
First of all however a big thank you to all of you who pledged to see this happen.
A special thanks to Marc De Mesel has once again shown that he is fully committed to seeing BCH succeed. https://twitter.com/MarcDeMesel
There was enough interest/pledges to pay for the basic infrastructure of the project but not enough to pay for the work of compiling all the information needed to make it actually useful as a platform.
We will have to consider how to best go forward from here, but the project will go forward.
**Bear Market**
We are all painfully aware that we are in a significant bear market at the moment. There would certainly be more people willing to contribute if their portfolio's were not underwater already.
**Forking**
Bitcoin Cash will fork today. It seems unlikely there will be a chain split given the current climate. However until recently it was somewhat less clear how things would turn out. This probably made many potential pledgers weary of doing anything with their coins until they had a clearer idea of what was to come. This is perhaps the biggest reason more people were not pledging on Flipstarters in general. Build.Cash will attempt another Flipstarter once the hardfork has settled and there is far less chance of some unknown danger. https://build.cash/
**Advertising**
People can not pledge if they are not aware of the project. Build.Cash would certainly have benefited from making a greater effort to get the word out about what Build.Cash is trying to do. The articles that were posted had all the relevant information in them. However reading a wall of text takes time. Time that people are not going to spend unless they have a good reason to believe it will be of interest to them. https://build.cash/
A video would probably get that information across a lot clearer and easier. A video will be created to accompany our second Flipstarter campaign.
**Reddit Post** https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/jjggg7/bitcoin_cash_is_in_serious_need_of_trust_and/?sort=top
While it probably had little to no effect, someone who was either mistaken or had motivation to see the Build.Cash campaign not succeed, claimed (without any evidence) that Build.Cash is a scam. https://build.cash/
A claim made by an unknown with 0 proof was unlikely affect the overall outcome. But it may have sewn seeds of doubt enough to stunt the easily persuaded.
Ironically this kind of attack is something that Build.Cash is designed to help combat by building trust in people and projects based on cataloging their actions. It is reasonable to assume that the kind of person to make baseless claims would prefer for public accountability systems to not be created. https://build.cash/
**Flipstarter Is Cumbersome**
Our Flipstarter campaign was not without technical difficulty. At some point the server needed to be restarted. It is unknown if that prevented people from pledging or not. But at least one person had trouble increasing their pledge.
Flipstarter is brilliant. However it is cumbersome and difficult to use for laypeople. It is limited to a plug-in in one wallet at the moment. Meaning the need to do many extra steps compared to a standard Bitcoin Cash transaction. Each added step is bad for the user experience and is another opportunity to lose a potential user. Build.Cash hopes to make funding projects easier and the Flipstarter team also hopes to make it more user friendly as well. This is not something that can be solved in the short term. https://build.cash/
Part of the Build.Cash platform will be allowing projects to submit their own self controlled donation addresses. This combined with the trust building we intended to facilitate should make supporting projects much simpler. https://build.cash/
**Failure to demonstrate what we are trying to do**
Linked to the poor advertising above, the responsibility at the end of the day is ours.
We didn't convey properly, or to enough people, what it is that we are aiming to do. There is a lot of work to be done spreading the word and showing all the ways we can help build BCH into new money for the world.
To that end we will redouble our efforts to make it much more clear what we intend to do for our campaign next year.
Again thank you everyone for the time you took to read the Build.Cash posts and making the effort to pledge. https://build.cash/
If you want to see Build.Cash become a reality please consider donating here: https://build.cash/
qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/address/qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js
Thank you.
Final Day of the Build.Cash Flipstarter
We are in the final 24 hours now of the Build.Cash Flipstarter.
In a weird twist, I posted on Reddit about how Build.Cash can help establish trust and accountability. The first comment on the thread was made by someone I have never seen before claiming that I was a scammer or had stolen my own identity. https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/jjggg7/bitcoin_cash_is_in_serious_need_of_trust_and/?sort=top https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/jjggg7/bitcoin_cash_is_in_serious_need_of_trust_and/gad44z5/
I was at first really happy to see my post had gotten so many comments overnight. That happiness turned sour quickly when I saw what everyone was talking about. A devolving debate into who is and is not a scammer.
It was however really great to see people on both sides of the IFP debate to quickly come to my defense and publicly state I am in fact me and Raspberry was very incorrect. Thank you to those who made the effort to shut down that silliness asap. https://www.reddit.com/user/RoutineRaspberry4706
The irony of the whole situation though is, that this is the exact kind of issue Build.Cash can help clear up .
All it would take is a quick look at my profile on Build.Cash and see all the relevant accounts I have. https://build.cash/2020/10/30/cheap-lightning/
While it would still certainly be possible that my Reddit account was compromised, a quick message to me via Twitter or e-mail would clear up any doubt. The information is quickly and easily accesible.
The quick and easy sharing of information is what it is all about.
There is less than a day to make this project a reality.
If you think this service would be of use to the Bitcoin Cash network please consider making a donation here: qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/address/qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js
Or consider helping found the service by pledging to our Flipstarter here: https://flipstarter.build.cash/
How Can Build.Cash Help You?: Build Trust and Accountability.
**TLDR:**
**As a developer, Build.Cash will help you by showing the world what you have been able to deliver and when thereby building trust and helping you secure funding.**
**As an end user, Build.Cash will help you find the projects and people in the network that you are looking for as well as how often projects have been updated. It will also help you to discover new exciting projects you may have no been exposed to via other channels.**
**As an investor, Build.Cash will help you see and judge how reliable the developers/projects you are considering partnering with are by seeing their reliability as Build.Cash will keep track of projects progress and follow through.**
Our Flipstarter is live here if you want to contribute. Also if you don't want to go through Flipstarter, direct donations are possible to this address: qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js https://flipstarter.build.cash/ https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/address/qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js
Though it was mentioned twice before in the previous 2 articles HERE and HERE, it is important enough an issue that it deserves its own focus. https://read.cash/@CheapLightning/how-can-buildcash-help-you-developer-edition-c979a53f https://read.cash/@CheapLightning/how-can-buildcash-help-you-end-user-edition-cf237623
One major thing lacking in the crypto sphere in general at the moment is trust and accountability systems. A trust-less system such as Bitcoin Cash does not require you to check the honesty of the Blockchain itself. That is one of it’s most brilliant advantages. However for everything around the periphery, including projects and developers, do indeed require some level of trust.
While open source projects should have the code audited before running, it takes on a whole different level when people in the network are either investing or donating to see projects completed and freelance developers funded.
No matter the method of funding, there needs to be some kind of accountability to ensure that people that promise to do a certain thing meet the social contract they agree to when soliciting for funding.
At the moment there are not many ways to check whether projects are doing what they say they will and even those methods are not especially clear or easy to find.
BCHN is one of few projects that seems to have full disclosure and is setting an excellent example of what projects should aspire to. Build.Cash helps to both lessen the burden on individual projects and developers while simultaneously allowing the public at large to see if and when they deliver on the things they promise to.
In the last few months a large number of Flipstarter campaigns have started. It is wonderful to see the technology has taken off and the community unite around people and projects that deserve to thrive. There no doubt has also been or will be shortly less than honest attempts to get money from the community. It is relatively easy to make a promise stating “we will do XYZ and BCH will benefit”. If it is a relatively known person in the network it is easy to look up their portfolio and see what they have done to advance BCH. However if they are not well known or perhaps prefer to do things less publicly and are not all over Reddit and twitter you may not even know about them and what they have done. But even so it would help immensely if there was a database of these statistics that people could easily check rather than jumping all around the internet.
**Build.Cash can help here in 2 ways:**
**1.) We will verify as best we can the projects and developers accounts and work.**
**2.) We will catalog and keep project development records updated at regular intervals.**
It is by no means a foolproof system. But it will at the very least help the building of trust in the network.
***If someone is anonymous how can you be sure they are legit?***
This is a difficult problem indeed. It takes a long time to build trust and a name for oneself.
That identity can be burned in an instant if they do something that harms their built up reputation.
Build.Cash does not seek to become Bitcoin Cash police or a regulator. Build.Cash can not ensure any project does what they say they will do. All we can do is keep track of what was done and when so people can decide for themselves if they want to trust and invest their time/money with them.
As stated many times the main goal of Build.Cash is the sharing of information and resources and hopefully cutting down the time it takes people to find the information about people and projects. This time savings will ripple throughout the network increasing its usability. It will be more than just a directory. The constantly updated information source will also help build trust and help funding be directed to where it would have the best impact.
Imagine a situation where you hear about a new project or protocol that would improve your business. On Build.Cash you will not only be able to see who is working on said project, but what they need in order to complete it as well as the number of successful targets and projects they have completed in the past. Seeing that developer X has come through and delivered 10 times in the past should help ease your mind about investing in them now. Seeing that developer X has no past projects to their name would understandably make you more caution and perhaps adjust your considered investment amount accordingly.
Projects that do not require outside funding will still be cataloged and their updates recorded accordingly. We will provide the network with the information you need no matter your role.
If you think this service would be of use to the Bitcoin Cash network please consider making a donation here: qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/address/qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js
Or consider helping our Found the service by pledging to our Flipstarter here: https://flipstarter.build.cash/
Thank you.
How can Build.Cash help you?: End-user Edition
***TLDR:*** ***Build.Cash*** ***will help you BUILD trust in BCH projects and developers by holding them accountable to their own roadmaps. To help make this a reality consider helping found*** ***Build.Cash here on Flipstarter.*** https://www.build.cash https://flipstarter.build.cash/
As a supporter or user of BCH, you have probably run into the same problem as many of us; Information and resources are scattered all over the place. There are so many projects and people involved that it is impossible to keep track of all the exciting things that are happening.
Even when you hear about a cool new project or tech, it is difficult to remember the name or even where to find the information you read before somewhere.
Services like Twitter and Reddit are great in their own respects however they are somewhat ephemeral in nature as the “time line” of each platform advances moment by moment. Leaving information you read just an hour ago often buried under a pile of new information and difficult to even search for due to major platforms algorithms assuming they know what you want.
On services like Discord and Telegram we often see comments like “Can anyone tell me what is the best resource for listing all open source BCH github repos / projects for developers?” or “Can anyone tell me if there is a project that can….”
Imagine now that you could search for every project in the BCH network, by its name, developer or even its category. Perhaps you read about a side project a developer was working on but can not remember the name of it. Wouldn't it be convenient to have a list of projects that the talented people in the BCH network have worked on under their name?
With Build.Cash this will be possible. Not only will you be able to do searches for this up to date information but you will also be able to read the “news” section of projects most recently updated. https://build.cash
It will be somewhat easy to stay up to date on the developments of the projects you are interested in all in one place.
****Donations****
Some of us in the BCH community make a big effort to donate to projects that we use and want to see continue to be developed or even just available. Projects and developers will have the option to list their own donation addresses on Build.Cash. This will allow them to accept anonymous donations to addresses that they 100% control, from any standard BCH wallet, completely free and non-custodial. Projects and developers will also be able to list funding goals, sort of like Kickstarter, that will allow end users to know not only what they intend to build but also how close they are to making that goal a reality. While we love Flipstarter and hope to incorporate it into Build.Cash in the future, it is difficult for the end user who only has a mobile phone wallet to quickly donate to the projects they love and want to support. Build.Cash will make donations as quick and easy as scanning a QR code. https://build.cash
For example the Build.Cash project page looks like this: https://build.cash/2020/01/02/build-cash/
****Trust Building****
In an effort to build social trust in projects and developers that choose to accept donations, we will be doing follow up with the projects and developers who set goals. If they say they need 100BCH to complete project X by September next year we will keep everyone updated as to whether or not that goal was met. While this will not allow you to get a refund or anything similar, it will help people decide if future donations are worth while or not. Our main goal at Build.Cash is the sharing of information in the BCH network. This includes our in house research of the projects and developers ability to execute their own plans effectively. https://build.cash
Project leads will be verified via so that we can be as certain as possible the information comes from the source. Much like the twitter “Verified” badge, project pages maintained by verified devs will feature a “Verified” badge.
****Community Building - International Communities****
One of the major problems I see constantly in the BCH community is its lack of cross border communication. There is a huge gap and lack of communication between the three major language groups using BCH. A huge issue we have is the fact that the majority of mining is done by companies that speak languages that are different than most protocol developers. One of the stretch goals of Build.Cash is to offer the site translated into both Japanese and Chinese and hopefully creating a stronger global network with deeper connections. https://build.cash
It is my hope that further translations of the site will be made available in the future however Japanese and Chinese will be given priority.
****Information****
The most important aspect of Build.Cash however is sharing and ease of access to information. https://build.cash
By having the ability to search for a project, see how awesome it is, how well they are maintaining their road-map, reaching their goals, how much funding they need (if any) and then clicking on the name of anyone involved to see the other cool things they are working on, all on one site will ease the burden of everyone involved.
For example the basic info of the Build.Cash project page looks like this: https://build.cash/2020/01/02/build-cash/
Build.Cash will also have a “Featured” project that rotates. This is will not be a paid promotion but a project that we think is fun/interesting/new/important and could use some more eyes on it. https://build.cash
**Thank you for taking the time to read this**.
If you think this project should be funded please feel free to pledge on our Flipstarter here. https://flipstarter.build.cash/
If you would prefer to make a direct donation to get this project off the ground you can donate here: qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/address/qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js
Or here:
How can Build.Cash help you? : Developer Edition.
Our Flipstarter is live here if you want to contribute. Also if you don't want to go through Flipstarter, direct donations are possible to this address: qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js https://flipstarter.build.cash/ https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/address/qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js
**Our Goal**
The main purpose of Build.Cash is to aid people in all aspects of the BCH network easily and quickly find and share the information they need. However for developers there is a bit of an added bonus. Not only can you find information and/or people that you may need to help your project come to fruition, but you will also be able share with the network at large your project and its current status. This includes to a limited degree fund-raising. https://build.cash/2020/01/02/build-cash/
Bellow you will find a walk through on how all this will work. Please keep in mind that the site itself (Build.Cash) is still a prototype and until launch most things are not functional. A full write up of our proposal can be found on our Flipstarter here. https://build.cash/2020/01/02/build-cash/ https://flipstarter.build.cash/
**Basic Profile.**
Your projects profile can be as simple or as detailed as you choose to make it. Generally speaking there will be an introduction written in lay-men's terms so that those who are perhaps less tech savvy will be able to understand the purpose of your project. We encourage devs to register themselves and submit their own profiles for expediency. However at launch of Build.Cash we will generate as many project profiles as we possibly can. https://build.cash/2020/01/02/build-cash/
**Logos**
You have the option to submit your own logo and branding to accurately represent your project.
**Team Members**
In this section will be all the people of relevance to the project and their associated titles and social media/contact links. This will allow people to quickly and easily contact you if you so choose.
Individual people can also create profiles if they wish. In that case the sections would be reversed. Instead of a “Team” section you will find a “Projects” section to easily see what was worked on by that individual.
**Links**
This section will list the official pages of the project. Social media, own domains and repositories of applicable.
**Current status and verification**
When looking for information on projects we often come across outdated or defunct sites and links.
One of the most important aspects of Build.Cash is that it will keep all information current. Major projects will have their information audited by our team on a very frequent basis. Smaller projects will also be verified regularly. However they will not be checked in on as often. This does not mean that you can not update your info yourself. We welcome you to do so in fact. What it means is that in the absence of a self made update, we will verify on a regular schedule and it may take a bit more time for updates to be reflected. https://build.cash/2020/01/02/build-cash/
**Fund-raising**
For many projects this will be a very welcome addition. We love Flipstarter and its team however there are a few issues that make it far less accessible to people to donate than we prefer. For one there is the need to use Electron Cash and its Plugin. This at the very least means people have to download special software and do extra set up that for many is a non-starter. It is also much more complicated than the kind of transactions that people using BCH are used to.
Another huge demerit is given transaction limits of BCH, there is often a high “minimum donation” threshold. Many people would be happy to chip in a few dollars to make a project happen. Fewer people are willing to jump through the hoops above and then donate a minimum or $40-100 etc.
Build.Cash does not suffer from the 2 above problems. Anyone can donate to a QR code or standard address on your Build.Cash profile (that you submit and control 100%) from any BCH wallet mobile or otherwise. Build.Cash does not have access to that address nor do we take a cut or a tax or fee. 100% of the funds go directly to you. https://build.cash/2020/01/02/build-cash/
There is also no minimum donation amount. People are able to donate even a few satoshis if they want.
The major positive that Flipstarter has over Build.Cash is that with Flipstarter, it is a smart contract. This means that until the total goal amount is reached no funds are moved. A person donating to see the development they desire to happen is confident that their funds will only go to the project once it is funded enough to be completed. https://build.cash/2020/01/02/build-cash/
With Build.Cash this is not the case. As it is a standard TX funds leave the donors wallet immediately whether the total goal amount is reached or not. If you support the project and its devs perhaps that is not a big deal as you want to see them succeed anyway. But for people making large donations in the hopes that project X happens this could be seen as a major draw back. https://build.cash/2020/01/02/build-cash/
A way to somewhat mitigate this problem is to set up goal amounts on Build.Cash. This means that as the thermometer fills you can see what will be done at each level. A total full funding amount of say 500 BCH could have individual goals in 100 BCH increments if you so choose. https://build.cash/2020/01/02/build-cash/
This does require a certain amount of trust though. Build.Cash will help your project build that trust with the rest of the network. If your project reaches its funding goal of X amount we will update your status to show the success and will also follow up to see the implementation of the reached goals is achieved. This will allow potential future donors to see how well you manage to do what is proposed and build trust accordingly. https://build.cash/2020/01/02/build-cash/
Build.Cash will also attempt to incorporate Flipstarter campaigns for projects in the future as one of our own stretch goals. This will allow projects to choose either or both approaches. https://build.cash/2020/01/02/build-cash/
While aiding projects and people in their fundraising efforts is an integral part of Build.Cash's platform, it is not our main purpose. Our main goal is helping people like you and projects like yours succeed in building better cash for the world. https://build.cash/2020/01/02/build-cash/
Again our Flipstarter is live here if you want to contribute. Also if you don't want to go through Flipstarter, direct donations are possible to this address: qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js https://flipstarter.build.cash/ https://explorer.bitcoin.com/bch/address/bitcoincash:qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0crtktu5vw
Thank you.
The Flipstarter for Build.Cash is live!
The flipstarter for my proposed project is live. https://flipstarter.build.cash/
I dont think I can write it better than the proposal on Flipstarter so I will copy it again below
**What is Build.Cash?**
Bitcoin Cash is Thriving. There is so much happening in the BCH community. There are more than 80 meet-ups happening all over the world. There are thousands of online and brick and mortar stores accepting Bitcoin Cash. There are more developers and projects being worked on than ever before. In fact there are so many projects being developed it has become difficult to find information about them. It is nearly impossible to keep track of what is being built and who is building what.
If I were to ask you what is the best place to find a BCH wallet where would you look? If I asked you what BCH privacy projects are being developed and where can I find them, what would you say?
There has been a problem sharing and compiling information. I want to end that problem.
**The Inspiration**
Last Fall while co-organizing the Devcon 5 Osaka BCH/ETH after party I was faced with the challenge of securing sponsorship. I found it quite difficult to track down information about all the various projects I wanted to connect with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me3rleGGw7w
I knew it was a fantastic opportunity to pull our two communities together. I was confident that some BCH centered businesses would appreciate the opportunity to reach out to the Ethereum community.
Who do I contact?
Should I send the project a DM on twitter?
Should I try to figure out who the lead developer is first?
But how does one even find them to begin with?
I found myself looking for a list of projects. I found a few resources that listed things but many were poorly maintained, outdated and extremely limited in scope. Bitcoin.com is probably the best source of information about BCH for new people. There is a "getting started" and a "news" section as well as an exchange and whole slew of tools and other resources. But it rightfully makes no effort to maintain a list of projects and people working on BCH. Bitcoin Cash Wallets is great for comparing wallets. However it is limited to only that. There is also"Awesome Bitcoin Cash"on github. Coin Dance (cash.coin.dance specifically) is getting closer to what I was looking for and is fantastic. But still not quite comprehensive enough. I thought to myself that *someone* should make a directory to make it easier to find and share information and news about what is developed and being developed. There is clearly a need for such a thing and *someone* should build it. *Someone* should pull together all that information. *Someone* should make sure it stays up to date as well. *Someone* should attempt to make it easier for projects to get funding as well. https://www.bestbchwallets.com/wallets
**"Someone"**
I see a larger need, I have had that need myself and I am going to make it happen.
Who am I and why should you trust me to make this happen?
I got into the space in 2011 when you could still mine with GPUs. I have been running a successful online business for 15 years, so Bitcoin was a very welcome fit. I am currently the Osaka BCH meetup co-organizer. Before covid-19 we were having bi-weekly meet-ups here. I also co-host and sometimes moderate the Japan Virtual Meetup http://cheaplightning.com/ https://www.meetup.com/Osaka-Bitcoin-Cash-Meet-Up https://twitter.com/YokooAkane/status/1250432035274907649/photo/1
I am really proud to say that I co-organized the Devcon 5 Osaka BCH/ETH after party which was a great success and I think helped form a bridge between our 2 communities. I also help out with whatever else I can when asked including helping the former BCF with logistics and sent shirts and stickers etc to meetup groups all over the world. I have also helped out the new Bitcoin Cash Network Discussions group and Satoshi's Angel's a bit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me3rleGGw7w https://bitcoincashnetworkdiscussions.org/ https://www.satoshisangels.com/
I do not want to bore you with my Bitcoin history, but if anyone is curious I wrote a more detailed history that you can read HERE. https://read.cash/@CheapLightning/now-this-is-intheresting-e199c1b3
Bitcoin Cash is one of the most decentralized if not the most decentralized cryptocurrency in the world. This is a great thing. However it is not *all* great. For better or worse, we do not have the benefit of a "foundation" to direct projects. We have no crowdsale or token sale. We have no premine. We have no Blockstream and V.C. nor nchain to direct or strangle things as they see fit.
Many times I have been talking to developers and heard similar ideas and found that many people are working on similar but separate projects. Instead of reinventing the wheel, teaming up and sharing ideas could hopefully speed things up and not waste time and scarce resources.
**So what can I do to help?**
At the most basic level I hope to create a sort of directory or "white pages" for projects. A place to lookup projects by name, type, most recently updated or by who is working on them. A sort of BCH-wiki that also allows people to receive non-custodial donations to their projects by posting a verified BCH address.
The mission of Build.Cash is to be a well curated and constantly updated resource for all people. A hub of information about all projects in the space. People looking for a specific kind of product like wallets will be able to find all that are available and see how recently they have been updated. People looking for games, gambling sites, full nodes, hardware, financial products and everything else that has a BCH focus, sorted in multiple ways. https://read.cash/@CheapLightning/now-this-is-intheresting-e199c1b3
Perhaps you are a developer looking for a designer. You will be able to search for people based on their abilities and see what other projects they have worked on. People with projects under their belt will also be able to make personal profiles with their skills and have them linked to the projects they previously worked on.
Build.Cashwill be a somewhat basic website. A collection of project pages with ability for people to submit new projects to be listed as well as editing for people with established project pages. The main challenge will be having someone make sure the information is as accurate as possible and to reach out to projects at regular intervals to get updates. It will require a significant amount of time to do so. Which is why I am seeking funding for this project. https://read.cash/@CheapLightning/now-this-is-intheresting-e199c1b3
**Goals Brief**
- Continued regular communication/updates with/from project leads.
- Increase communication and sharing of information across the space.
- Help projects find funding.
- Help projects find team members.
- International facilitation by listing the projects in several languages.
**Who Are Our Target Users?**
- People trying to find a particular type of project
- Projects who need team members
- People looking for projects to work on
**Site Overview**
The best way is probably to see it in action. A crude demo site I made is up and running now at Build.Cash . You can see the basic function of what I hope to do. However there is no active database at the moment so no one can sign up to add their own project. There is only one example project page up and running at the moment and that is the project page for what you are reading right now. https://build.cash/2020/01/02/build-cash/
If you do not want to click around I will provide a brief overview.
The home page itself is pretty self explanatory. The current default view is that of selectable categories. You see categories listed alphabetically by default.
The live version will have other sorting options such as "Featured" and "Recently Updated" and "Popular". At the moment though we only have one project.
There is also the "People" category at the top. This will allow you to search for individuals and see what projects they have worked on.
Individual project pages will list all the things you come to expect including a description of the project as well as the official locations of their project and social media accounts. Projects will have the option to submit a verified BCH address to receive non-custodial donations directly. Recent project news will also be listed prominently on each page. Projects that we have not been able to get updates from in a certain amount of time (6 months or a year perhaps) will be marked as defunct.
Only projects that are predominantly BCH focused will be listed. We do not intend to compete with map.bitcoin.com and list physical merchants. This is about projects built on/with BCH. We will however also have a resources section for anyone who wants logos etc. https://map.bitcoin.com/
**Donors FAQ**
**1. How Would You Describe Your Project?**
An easy to use website where people can quickly find the most important and up to date info about every project developed or being developed in the BCH space.
**2. What Are Your Goals and Objectives?**
The goal is to become a hub of information that many/all major projects utilize. This will be clear when/if major projects are eager to be listed and are keen to update their projects.
**3. Who Will Benefit From Your Project?**
Hopefully everyone in the space indirectly. People needing basic information as well as anyone who wants to help or needs help with a project will see the most benefit.
**4. Will You Be Creating Any Products?**
Just a website/database. Maybe merchandise (t-shirts and stickers etc) to ease dependence on donors in the future.
**5. Will You Be Providing Any Services?**
Ideally projects will be keen to update their own pages. However if there is no update for a certain amount of time, our team will reach out. This will be a service of more interest for "searchers" than "listers". Dead/unreachable projects will be labeled as defunct. There will be a somewhat uphill chicken and egg battle. I think when people see the value in having their projects listed and up to date they may take the effort to do so themselves. However if there are no projects listed, no one will come look. So we have to populate the site ourselves first in order to generate that interest.
**6. What Methods Will You Use?**
At first I will be trying to get some momentum leveraging contacts I know. I will also pre-fill in as much detail for major projects as possible to inspire use and take less dev time. Hopefully projects will come to see the benefit of the site itself and make efforts to keep their own listings up to date.
**7. What Kind of Schedule Do You Anticipate?**
Ideally, after the first year, the site itself will eventually be mostly user input driven. However checking the validity of projects and communicating with devs will clearly take some amount of time. For major projects I would expect to try to touch base with them on a regular schedule. Perhaps monthly. For lesser projects perhaps every six months depending on the scope.
**8. Will You Need Any Partners or Collaborators?**
Yes. There are many parts of this project that I am not skilled enough to implement. Specifically the backend of the website is beyond my skillset. Volunteers would also be welcome. There are a lot of other fantastic projects and people making amazing things. I would love to collaborate with many of them in the future. However I feel it is important to get the foundation of Build.Cash solid before we stretch beyond the main purpose of the project. http://build.cash/
**9. Will You Need Specific Information or Advice?**
I will need the expertise of people who are more capable than myself for sure. I have already contacted and gotten an estimate from a web developer, Corentin Mercier, to develop the nuts and bolts of the site itself. http://merc1er.com/
**10. Will You Need Special Systems or Equipment?**
No, nothing out of the norm for this kind of a website.
**11. Will You Need to Use Special Tools or Templates?**
No, nothing out of the norm for this kind of a website.
**12. How Will You Evaluate Project Success?**
Success will be easy to see. When the project has reached the level that it is a well used resource and a "go to" place where people go to get information about all projects in the BCH space.
**13. Who Needs to Review and Approve Decisions?**
The project director is me Cheap Lightning at first I will be the only paid staff and responsible for everything . However as part of incorporation as an NPO in Japan there will be two other voting members; @yumenoiwasaki and @emergent_reasons who will not be receiving compensation. The articles of incorporation go into quite a bit of detail and I will publish both the drafts and final versions on read.cash shortly. All financial decisions will be made by me except one, I will not be able to give myself a raise as per Japanese law. This would need to be approved by the entire board. https://twitter.com/CheapLightning https://twitter.com/EmergentReasons
**14. How Might Your Project Evolve over Time?**
At the moment I am planning on making the project in 4 phases:
**Phase 1 FLIPSTARTER:**
Flipstarter campaign.
Funds will be used to establish the 一般社団法人 (Ippan shadan hojin or general incorporated association), a non profit in Japan.
This includes the lawyer's fees (documentation, surrogation, consulting and government fees). The initial funds will also pay for the development of the website itself. The contracting of a back/front end developer as well as a designer. For this work we have gotten a quote from Corentin Mercier (bitcoincash.org, bitcoinbch.com etc) and if this Flipstarter is funded will contract the development work to him. Importantly it will also provide a one full year base salary for 1 staff member to do ALL the other work, the data entry of and tracking of all the various people and projects developed and in development. The management of the project. The compiling and verifying of all relevant information will take an enormous amount of time and organization at first. http://merc1er.com/
**Phase 2:**
When our Flipstarter is completed and phase 1 is shown to have been a success, and traction has been made in the BCH community Phase 2 will begin. At this time we may run another flipstarter but that will depend on the state of the market and our success after 6-12 months. Phase 2 is going to be about community building. Ideally we hope to be able to get the entire site translated into Japanese and Chinese to make further inroads to both of these extremely important and somewhat isolated communities. Further language translations may also be possible. However at first having the basic interface and pages translated into Japanese and Chinese will at the very least allow ease of access for people exploring the possibilities of BCH. Integrating flipstarter as an easy to deploy fundraising option will also be a stretch goal. I am aware of some other teams working on flipstarter as a platform and may attempt to integrate or collaborate in the future.
**Phase 3:**
Phase 3 will be about expansion. By this point we will begin to look at hiring more staff. If possible and if needed full time translators. Work on income generation streams such as advertising/highlighting of BCH projects as well as perhaps a line of "Build.Cash" merchandise. We hope to at some point be self sufficient and not have to rely solely on donations for administrative costs. In the future we may attempt to sell merchandise (t-shirts stickers etc) and perhaps even have advertisements. Referral links to all available sources will be used (bitcoin.com purse.io etc). As a non profit, we will be required by law to be fully transparent with all income and expenditures.
**I wish to reiterate this does not mean we turn into a for-profit business. It means only that we hope to have sources of income other than donations in order to grow our team and services. We will remain fully transparent.**
**Phase 4:**
Exploration of ways to gamify and expand adoption efforts worldwide. Google has had great success with their efforts to crowd source information for google maps using the gamification of data input. I believe that a key component of spreading BCH adoption is to make it fun, challenging and also taking a cue from Satoshi's greatest idea – incentivize greed to help make the world a better place. I have some lofty goals as to how we can go about doing that. But at the moment I feel a lot of the foundation needs to be laid first. Build.Cash is the first step in laying that foundation.
**15. Who Will Be Responsible for What?**
At first, I will be responsible for almost everything. I will also need to make sure the info given to me by users is as accurate as possible and need to be the one to verify that the people I am talking to are indeed who they say they are. I will also be required to write the descriptions or at least edit the information available about the projects. Some of these things like Cash Fusion can get extremely technical. Writing a description that is easy enough for a layperson to understand will also be required.
Keeping track of who has been contacted and when will require a fair amount of organization. A constant process of adding new projects and people while at the same time keeping previous pages up to date will dominate my time.
**16. What Risks Should You Plan to Manage?**
There is always going to be spam and scammers. Someone pretending to be Roger will probably happen on a weekly basis. People setting up a fake project page in an effort to solicit donations will certainly occur. Stressing that none of the funds go through/to me or are held in escrow or anything similar is a must. Vigilance of weeding out bad apples will probably grow quite quickly.
To avoid the above problems we will be sure to get cryptographic proof or other very hard to fake proof of ownership of domains and projects etc.
**17. What Open Issues Remain?**
My biggest challenge at the moment is getting a working prototype up and running. If people can see how it is to be used they may spark some interest. Getting all the pieces together and working will probably require help. Throwing together a basic prototype for making a project page is not hard. Getting to to work the way I want and reading the blockchain is a different story. My attempts to do so have led me to conclude that the results would be much better if I simply contract a professional.
**Initial funding and start up costs.**
The bare minimum initial funding to get the site up and running is going to be about
22 BCH ($6000 USD approx). This would pay for the web development as well as the set up costs as an NPO in Japan. 22 BCH would not however pay for any work being done beyond that and would be dependent upon volunteer efforts to stay up to date and relevant. If project leaders are inspired to keep their own project pages up to date this may work. I fear however that without an initial push of effort to get major projects listed ourselves the site will find limited use. The chicken and egg problem. No one uses a site with no info. No one enters info into a site that no one uses. This is why I think a dedicated builder is essential to the success of the project.
My estimated cost for the completion of **phase one** is approx 175 BCH ($50,000 US approx).
1 Year full time staff to do all the above minus webdev: $40000
Accounting and Incidentals: $4575
NPO registration and startup fees: $2700
Web development: $2150
Front End Design: $200
Flipstarter setup: $150
Domain (secured already): $130
Hosting (annual): $95
**Total: $50,000**
The flipstarter campaign is for Phase One, a full year of funding of full time work on the project. If the flipstarter fails I will attempt a second one minus the major cost of an annual salary and still actually set up the site/NPO. The project will go forward but it will be very limited in its growth potential and slow as I would have to work on it in my very limited free time.
**Commitments to the community**
- As a registered NPO in Japan we will be required by law to operate with full transparency.
- All funds donated will be held 50/50 in both BCH and stable coins.
- Any donations received will be to the address: [qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/address/qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js
- When expenditures are needed, business/people that accept BCH will be given priority.
- All current and future staff will be encouraged to accept all or part of their salaries in BCH.
- Build.Cash will never collect a fee for listing a project. We will also never handle donations and therefore will never take a cut. http://build.cash/
As a token of appreciation and participation, I will mint a Build.Cash founder SLP token and distribute 1 to each donor who pledges regardless of value. It will have no monetary or utility value. It will be a digital souvenir that you can hold in your wallet forever proving that you helped to build something positive.
If you are interested in making a donation but do not want to use flipstarter, please feel free to donate directly to: bitcoincash:qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js
**Thank you for taking the time to read and consider my proposal. With your help we can build better cash for the world together.**
https://flipstarter.build.cash/
My 2 Sats
There is a hole in BCH.
Decentralization is both a blessing and a curse. I personally think it is wonderful to have so many different and diverse teams working on so many new and interesting things. However keeping tracking of who is building what and where has become very difficult. I am constantly surprised by new things mentioned by people that I had no idea even existed.
So many people are busy building things, but there has been a real and very tangible lack of communication and information sharing. At this stage in BCH's life, most teams are building with a skeleton crew. Some teams are perhaps only 1 person. It is forgivable that they do not take much time to do marketing or promotion. I sincerely hope that in the future teams building on BCH will get large enough that they can hire PR, marketing, social media management teams and the like. But at the moment for almost all projects, even the somewhat larger ones, that is simply not possible.
To that end I hope to be a big help in facilitating inter-team communication and also providing easy access to information and resources to the public as well.
I am currently in the process of developing a site called BUILD.CASH. I am not done laying the foundation yet. Given that some projects will need money to achieve their goals, I will have to let the cat out of the bag before I would prefer to do so.
BUILD.CASH is going to be at its more base level primarily a carefully updated and curated directory site of all BCH focused projects. A one stop shop to answer all the questions you may have about who is building what and how to contact them. However its secondary purpose and function will be to help those projects get funding in completely non custodial ways. BUILD.CASH will allow any BCH focused project post a QR code, CashID or standard address of their choice to receive donations directly to a wallet they manage. They will also be able to post their target amounts to achieve different goals. This is of course optional. Projects that do not want or require donations will still be listed and updated as frequently as possible.
BUILD.CASH would be an extremely valuable tool to help independant people, funds or companies decide what projects are worth funding and an easy place to research projects and see what roadblocks are preventing that killer app from being made. If BUILD.CASH has a chance to be built, tracking down the relevant people will no longer be a crap shoot or a chore. The pertinent information will be at your fingertips and as up to date as possible.
I am sure many of you have read about a project on reddit or twitter and then later struggled to remember its exact name. Cash.... Wallet... Bit.... Key... Something.
In that instance it would be quite convenient to look up the project by its type rather than its name. BUILD.CASH will allow you to do so.
Perhaps you are a whale and want to donate some money to a type of project that would directly help your business there by increasing the value of your own project and by extension BCH. BUILD.CASH will be the place to find projects that may help your business. Or perhaps you just want to give back to the community in a way that would benefit everyone. Perhaps you have found a developer who is making big waves in the space and would like to help them out, but don't want to ask them directly for a donation address. Notable devs will also have a page of their projects listed as well as contact info including donation addresses as well as their official accounts/handles.
I have been in contact with the people over at FLIPSTARTER and if all goes well I will also be integrating the FLIPSTARTER platform into BUILD.CASH however this will be a stretch goal as it complicates things quite a bit. Please keep in mind that BUILD.CASH’s primary function is going to be a directory of projects and people. The fund-raising part of it will be completely optional for projects and people and will of course be
**NON-CUSTODIAL.**
As far as the fund-raising aspect goes it will be visually similar to Kickstarter, a project can post levels that unlock.
The design and back end work will be done by well known BCH community members who have already given quotes for work needed to get the project up and running.
I will posting a much more detailed proposal soon. But in the mean time I wanted to put this out there so people have something in the back of their mind as an option as we move forward into somewhat uncharted waters. I have a feeling that things will be shaken up quite a bit in the near future and going forward I want to see the community get stronger and more robust and fully intend on helping that happen.
Let's Build It So They Will Come.
-CL
(Also, I really want to hear your feedback about my idea. So please comment bellow anything constructive you can think of, thanks.)
"Now this is intheresting"
6:55 PM on the 19th of May 2011 I wrote an email to my best friend in the world titled “Now this is intheresting”. I had just discovered Bitcoin for the second time.
To be honest, the first time I had read about Bitcoin, I immediately discounted it as a scam. I thought to myself, “There is no way to make digital money that can't just be copied and even if they could, you would have to trust some company to not change the rules or trust them to not run off with your money. It’s probably a scam anyway”.
About a year later though I read the clickbait headline online “Bitcoin P2P currency is the most dangerous project we've ever seen”. I read the article and instantly I was hooked.
I finally understood the genius of Satoshi incentivizing greed. Despite my limited understanding of computer science, reading the white paper made it all make sense.
What really attracted me to Bitcoin was much more to do with the political/philosophical reasons than financial.
On a personal level, for more than 12 years now, a large part of my income has been net based (which where my username comes from and predates the network). The idea of being able to cut out all the third parties was super exciting to me. Banks and credit cards and PayPal and charge-backs and companies and governments with various rules about who and where and when and how I can transact was really annoying.
Want to transfer money from yourself in one account in one country to yourself in another account in a different country?
Sorry you can't do that so we closed your account and banned you for life.
Having lived in several countries now I know first hand the issues that come with being unbanked. Do to various issues I had no choice but to live unbanked for 2 years. Without the help of kind and sympathetic locals there is no way I would have been able to have a place to live among other things. Many of us take for granted all the things that come with easy access to a financial institution. But when you can not even get a bank account everything becomes difficult or impossible. You can not get a decent job if they can not pay you and they certainly will not pay you in cash. Renting a place to live is almost impossible for the same reasons. Also you can forget about getting a credit card. That by itself means all kinds of doors are closed for you. Many utility and communication companies will not give you service without a credit card on file.
One bank flat out told me they would not allow me to open an account because I was a foreigner. Similarly despite my good credit rating, regular pay, and a decent balance at one bank I was unable to get a credit card for over 5 years due to not being a native.
Saying money is power is an understatement. Taking control of the global money supply out of the hands of people who answer only to themselves seemed like the best first step to making the world a better place for everyone. Banking the unbanked. Perhaps wars would also happen far less often if inflation were less possible. Perhaps the playing field could be leveled. Perhaps a FREE global economy less influenced by politics would be possible. Perhaps it would become impossible to seize a person's funds when a leader decrees transaction type X is no longer legal overnight. Free the market, Free the world. Permissionless. Peer to Peer. There was so much appeal to me in just the chance of achieving some of these things.
It was even more enticing after seeing interviews with Gavin Andresen on YouTube. No one was hiding the potential financial gains that could be had if Bitcoin was a success, but that was the beauty of it. Incentivizing greed. There was a little something for everyone. Those who wanted to wrestle the control of the economy away from dark back room deals could participate and use their fiat to vote for the change directly. Those that wanted to “invest” could also do so. They worked together just fine and actually even did well to enhance each other. It was a win win.... at first.
I downloaded and installed the Bitcoin wallet. Thanks to the faucet that Gavin set up I was able to actually try Bitcoin. I instantly saw how easy it was to send instant cash payments globally. Pasting an address and clicking a single button was all it took to send money halfway around the world. I can not thank Gavin enough for setting up such a great service as well as all the other things he did, especially to spread adoption.
Things were going well. I made my first actual purchase. I bought a WiFi dongle (at the bubble peak it was worth more than $40,000 US). CPU mining was built into the wallet and as my CPU core temp rose and rose and my fan screamed I calculated my chance to find a block based on my hash-rate. It was, barring some miracle, 0. Luckily, as I have always enjoyed gaming, I already had a mid-high level GPU and with a few clicks on some simple but powerful software I was contributing my hash to the network via a mining pool.
Not long after someone made a woo-commerce plug-in that allowed people to accept payments pretty easily via the Electrum wallet. I felt pretty fancy joining the sellers of organic honey, coffee beans and alpaca socks. I now had 2 sources of Bitcoin coming in.
Reading bitcointalk.org became a daily ritual. My interest and enthusiasm grew. Some exciting things started up. The Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange, more infamously known in Bitcoin history as the GBSE, was the first “exchange” I became aware of. In addition to trading, it also allowed you to “invest” in various Bitcoin related projects that would issue dividends among other things all without any regulation of course. This was truly the wild west.
It was also the first of many times I got fucked.
At the time it was actually pretty difficult to get my hands on any Bitcoin. A small amount was coming in through my online businesses. Mining also provided what I felt to be a trickle. If there was an ATM near by I would have visited. But as far as I knew there was not. My first actual purchase of a number of Bitcoin was a very convoluted multi-step process that I will not detail here. It worked but it was far from easy. I also lost a few percent with every step. This was not the peer to peer money I craved. But at that time I was still completely at the mercy of the traditional financial system. I searched for another way to get more. My search on bitcointalk led me to a person who was proposing a very new idea for Bitcoin that assuming people were honest was actually a great idea. I invested in this very early Bitcoin company. I will spare you the details but I invested a small number of Bitcoins. At the time a small amount was 15-20 BTC. I am a bit fuzzy on the actual value of BTC at the time but I am sure that it was less than $100. It was all new territory. No one was even sure that what we were doing was legal or not, and as such, there was a degree of opsec that we all did. This makes the whole trust/verify aspect difficult. This baptism by fire was a good lesson. “Dividends” from my “investment” came slower than expected as did the evidence that promises were being kept. A smarter scammer would have kept the scam going on longer to milk me and the others out of more Bitcoin. The time frame from proposal to collection was quite short and he dropped off the face of the Earth pretty quickly. That being said I have no idea how much money they pulled in and once the GBSE was shut down it became impossible to know anyway. I saw the red flags even before putting money in. But once the scammer failed to report in on time the first time, I saw the writing on the wall and sold my stake on the GBSE at a minor loss. My apologies to whomever bought it. You had more hope than I did.
Sure enough within a month, scammer stop responding all together. I assume they made off with a few hundred BTC which at that time would probably not have been a life changing amount.
As I said before I was GPU mining. There was already some work being done in making FPGA into a usable miner. But from what I could see at the time it was not specialized enough to be that competitive. Mining however was turning into big business. You could not find certain series of ATI cards anywhere and if you could they were going for way above retail. Gamers were pissed off. Mining was so profitable that companies were starting to make ASICs specifically for hashing SHA256. Most were out of my price range. Despite how great I could clearly see Bitcoin was, I also wasn't entirely sure Bitcoin had a future BECAUSE of how revolutionary it is. There are many powerful people in the world who would resist that kind of change and it would be somewhat easy to squish it before adoption took hold. The survival of the project was/is by no means certain. Spending a bunch of money on special hardware that had no other use or resale value was scary to me too. Then came along some consumer level mining ASICs that had rosy websites that were full of glowing stats of how much money you would make. One such company was “Butterfly Labs”. My best friend and I did the math and sure enough if the math was right they would pay for themselves and make a tidy profit to boot. The problem was that all of this was a projection based on assumptions that would prove to be deadly.
1.) The difficulty was projected to be a certain amount by the shipping date.
2.) The projected difficulty did not take into account the spike that would occur when all these new fancy ASCIs they and others were making came online.
3.) The numbers also counted on Butterfly Labs being an ethical company.
As is well known now, Butterfly Labs was not ethical and did not ship on time and also did not account for all the new ASICs coming online. By the time my best friend and I got our ASICs they were no longer profitable. They shipped late and the overall network hash-rate had skyrocketed. To add insult to injury they arrived covered in dust adding proof to the accusation that the equipment we paid for was used to mine for weeks or months until they were no longer valuable enough to mine. Worse still was that we paid for them in Bitcoin meaning in BTC terms we were even further in the hole that they could never mine their way out of.
Pre-ordering a money printer seemed like a good idea at the time, but the lesson I learned was that if they do not have the gear ON HAND at the time of sale.. chances are you wont be getting them on time. In hindsight, if I had just bought BTC instead of buying ASICs and GPUs it would have been way better. As I mentioned before, at the time there were no real on-ramps for me so it was really one of my only choices unless I wanted to an international money wire..
Around the same time was when something called MT.GOX was being discussed all over. The fact that it was also in Japan and connected to Japanese banks gave me the false confidence I needed to send some BTC there to try my hand at trading.
**GOXED.**
There is no one to blame but myself. I got greedy. When the issues with people getting their money out of GOX started I should have bailed. But I didn't and paid the price. I can't blame anyone for that. Despite the messages from people “in the know” saying things were fine, I should have read the writing on the wall.
“Willy bot” made it clear that something was amiss. But I was “making money” so I didn't want to spoil a good thing. Too good to be true.
When all trading stopped I was not that surprised. I thought that banking would make getting fiat out impossible, at the end I was in BTC so surely it was sitting in a cold wallet and they could just send it to me.
Not your keys, not your coins.
I thought I learned another lesson that day.
But losing money on the Cryptsy exit scam means I did not. 4Th time's the charm?
After that I had had enough for a while. There were already grumblings of discontent in the BTC dev community. But I felt that it was above my pay grade.
I didn't have a voice in that fight.. The only thing I could do was run my own node. So I ran XT. Videos of everyone I saw other than Gavin and Mike Hearn did not fill me with confidence. Only the XT side made sense to me. I had really conflicted feelings. Things were supposed to be decentralized, yet the most logical people and the person Satoshi left the project to were seemingly losing a battle for directing the future of the project to relative newcomers who Gavin somewhat hastily gave power too. I am not sure what the correct course of action was. When Bitcoin had no real value, any helping hands capable of understanding such a complex project and that would also be willing to work on it for free were certainly scarce. Getting people on board to ensure the project survived was probably a priority. I doubt there was much time to cyber stalk these people to see what kind of characters they were or the clearly toxic behavior some of them had that would come to sabotage things in the future.
I have said it publicly before and I will say it again. Gavin's major flaw is that he is too kind and trusting. He hands out the benefit of the doubt far too easily. But I will still love and respect him forever.
There was all this talk about ASICBOOST and “evil chinese miners” that didn't make any sense to me. Anyone with money could run whatever hardware they wanted. The GPU chips that dominated the very inefficient industry were also made in China. Few thought the end of the world was near when GPU miners started. But now chip makers who invested untold millions in R&D and actual hardware were the greatest threat?
The people saying all these things were often people I had never heard of. Yet their posts were up-voted and amplified. The people online that I used to follow were at first shunned and brigaded against by the community/platforms and then finally in many cases banned altogether.
I had a really hard time understanding what was going on. This project that had so much potential and seeming unity in what we were all trying to do. Make new money for the world and if we get rich in the process all the better. People were free to talk about all kinds of things on r/bitcoin and bitcointalk. That is how I heard about Litecoin and Namecoin and merged mining and XT and well.. everything. But suddenly there was a list of things that were forbidden to talk about. Talking about scaling censorship resistant money in CERTAIN ways was now being censored. I really didn't get how this could be happening. Especially since the reasoning behind it made no sense to me and seemed scattershot at best. The reasons why these things were now not ok kept changing. A very small number of people were dictating what was ok to talk about on “their” platforms.
I didn't really understand Lightning, but I did understand sidechains and colored coins so I figured it was something similar and to some degree thought that the people who were making Bitcoin Core would surely do what is best for the coin. I was confused by everything that was happening but at the same time didn't think I knew enough to have an opinion. I was disillusioned with what was going on in general. Gox was a blow and then the silencing of “dissidents” plus the banishment of Gavin who had talked to the feds made me frustrated and lose hope. I still accepted BTC in my businesses but I sort of had the opinion that if Bitcoin survived the next few years and did not drown itself I could always come back into the community and review what had gone on in the meantime. I didn't need to read the latest news on Bitcoin everyday anymore.
In hindsight I regret this choice. Perhaps if more of us been outspoken and stood up and asked those important questions early on there would have been sensible scaling. Perhaps if more of us screamed about how bad it is to put all your eggs in one as yet unproven LN basket more people would have listened and canceled out the small block FUD.
I was probably out of touch with bitcoin for a year. It wasn't until one of my customers emailed me to complain that I was insane if I thought they should pay a fee that was higher than the price of the item itself in my store.
I had no idea what they were talking about. I assumed the plugin got messed up in an update or when I moved hosting companies or something similar. Obviously Bitcoin couldn't be broken. I never paid more than the minimum fee which was also never over... 5 cents?
But a quick search showed me that bitcoin was actually indeed broken. How could Satoshi let his project be broken? Why didn't he come back and say “you fools! The solution is simple!” But he didn't. I had to conclude that he was dead or in jail.
How did this happen? The price was finally rising which meant people were moving coins on and off the exchanges. I assume people were also moving coins into and out of cold storage. What used to be beer money was now car money. This all ground the network to a halt. I too decided it was time to move some coins.
My transaction was stuck for a week.
I started reading bitcoin talk again. I started reading reddit again and I joined in crypto twitter.
It was a shit show.
I had questions. But anyone who asked those questions or raised reasonable concerns were treated as heretics and cast out. Even if I didn't already sort of think raising the block size was a good idea, what was easily and instantly understandable was if given a choice between a side that celebrated free speech and open discussion or a side that has a top down decree of what is and isn't OK to discuss I will side with free speech.
The argument was of course that a subreddit and a domain are private places “owned” by individuals. Sure, fine.
But what I didn't hear was any small blocker speak out against the lack of free speech or transparency. I took that to mean that they also agreed that XT and BU and big blocks in general should not be discussed. I can not say that I noticed anyone take the stance that big blocks were a bad idea but the censorship was also bad. At least not in a meaningful way. Some of the bigger names took a sort of “censorship is bad but whatyagonnado” stance about the whole thing. It was lip service really and really disappointing. Either people were motivated to squish debate. Or in their view their way forward was the only realistic way. Perhaps a bit of both. But that really goes to the heart of the issue doesn't it. What we think the important points of Bitcoin are diverse. Some of us have very strong ideological reasons. The others view any change (even removing temporary band-aids) as an assault to their store of value, their financial future, their legacy. It seems a tad bit selfish/greedy to me. But that was the beauty of what Satoshi created. He turned greed into a means of security. I think he perhaps underestimated how far people will take their greed or what people will do to protect their wealth/power. He had no way to know how much of a success his project would be though.
I heard rumors of the New York and Hong Kong agreements etc so I thought level heads would prevail.
I read about Segwit2X. It seemed like the best solution to me. It was sensible scaling. It took the fee pressure off and allowed adoption to continue. It also allowed the development of Lightning which many people said was a magic bullet despite no real world use to back it up. Lightning by itself was reckless. 2X was also a compromise. It would have allowed to community to stay together. But when I learned that it was not going to be a simultaneous activation and that the Segwit part was coming first I knew that it was a bamboozle. I, for the second time, thought the entire Bitcoin project was in jeopardy. Adoption was going negative and big names were even saying that spending bitcoin was a bad idea. I no longer understood the point of the project. Saying “store of value” is the same as saying Satoshi created a “new investment platform”. The P2P and the cash part of the title were now wrong.
The bitcoin.org site took out the “fast” and “free” part of the description. The purpose and narrative of bitcoin was changed. But they deny to this day that the focus has changed. Clearly it is I that remember it wrong.
I have no problem with the bitcoin project changing. I have no problem with when the majority of people find a particular aspect of something more useful, for development to focus on that part. What I do have a problem with is massive focus changes happening and at the same time people restricting discussion about it while at the same time saying “no nothing has changed Mr. Crazy, you must be crazy now get out of here crazy talk isn't welcome.”
Nintendo started as a playing card company. Facebook started as a sleazy “hot or not” site. Nokia was a rubber boot company. Shell oil was a seashell import company. Even PayPal started as a company meant to send money between handheld PDA devices. None of the above companies pretend nothing changed. They changed and they owned those changes.
The fork was an interesting time. I was in the 2X camp but it seemed pretty clear that there were issues at the start. Bitcoin Cash seemed to come out of nowhere. But it was what ended up getting the most community support of the big blockers. 2X never really got off the ground.
I think a lot of us were hoping that Satoshi was going to emerge and take a side. I hoped that there was going to be some kind of clear message from him, a tie breaker if you will. A message from heaven saying “my project was meant to go this way!” Perhaps he wanted to see if Nakamoto consensus would actually play out. Perhaps like a parent he decided his project should be free to take its own path. Perhaps he is no longer with us to express an opinion even if he wanted to. If Satoshi had signed genesis and said “follow core” a lot of us would have had a much harder time choosing BCH. But he didn't. The fork happened and the big blocks we wanted started to be mined. The community was now not only divided in opinion but in hash and economics as well.
2017 was a year of mad gains.
I think the vast majority of new people who came into the space looked at BTC as primarily an investment that was soaring. A hard fork would change the status quo and to some degree was “risky” despite the lack of evidence to support that narrative and the constantly changing narratives as well.
People's once in a lifetime investment bubble was making dreams come true left and right. They viewed a hard fork as a direct attack not on “bitcoin” but on their investment and by extension their future or their children's future.
Greed started out as an incentive to secure the network. It ended up paralyzing it.
People that hoped Bitcoin could be something more than gains went to BCH, so that is where I ended up focusing my efforts as well.
The first BCH conference ever was held in Tokyo. I live about 500km away in Osaka, which is not that far. I felt that it was important to attend even though I was not selling/buying/shilling anything. I wanted to see some of these outspoken people in real life. I wanted to look into their eyes while they spoke and see if any of the presenters were “scams”.
Overall I was impressed by the people I saw speak and I was impressed by the people I met. That is not to say everyone was impressive. There was a tiny minority of people there who were clearly out to shill their ICO and find investors. I was approached by people who had many a very wide variety of ideas. Most of those pitch people did not seem to care about BCH in general. They were just looking for whales. When people started talking to me they would ask when/how I got into Bitcoin. At first I would tell a very short version of the above. But when people heard I had mined BTC in 2011 you could actually see dollar signs flash in their eyes as they assumed I was a whale (I am not) and the pitches would come on strong. I heard about an AI controlled sports betting on the blockchain ICO. I heard several lending schemes which I didn't understand and really made no sense given that they could not compete with the crazy parabolic returns that were going on. I was also quite surprised to talk to at least 2 people who were not only pro BTC but very much anti BCH. “Lightning is going to solve scaling!” (that was more than 18 months ago ma dudes). The flip side of that was of course listening to and talking to people who were more or less on the same page as me and wanted to make new money. To be quite frank, I was there to listen. I wasn't there to network or make friends. I wanted to learn. Nonetheless it was a life changing experience. I understood for the first time that part of the true beauty of a permissionless system was that you don't need to be approved to participate. There were people from all walks of life building things and doing things. I understood the words before. But somehow without seeing it in action it was unrelatable.
If you want to build an app. Go ahead. There is no official playbook. There is no company to license IP from. There is no foundation to add you to the approved list. Just build it and if it works well and people use it you have succeeded. Have you noticed there is no BCH meetup in your town? Guess where you can apply to start one? No where. Just start one and make it happen. Not only do you not need approval but there is a whole network of people and businesses who will help you, for free, if you want.
That first conference is also where I met Yumeno at the first day's after party. We were surprised to find out that we both lived in Osaka and we both came on our own with nothing but curiosity as fuel. We decided to touch base again later when we got back to Osaka. Both of us were clearly inspired by the conference and Yumeno suggested we start a meetup here in Osaka. I had some reservations given the amount of trolling that goes on online.
About a month later we were hosting our first official Osaka BCH meetup. We have had a few bumps along the way. There luckily has not been anyone who is openly hostile or has come to just ruin things for everyone and I am glad to say that even a few BTC maximalist people have come full of curiosity and to ask questions and get an idea what the BCH fuss is all about. The most recent of which was a Japanese man whose, like many people, main issue with BCH being the colorful characters that were formerly pro BCH. He had a much more positive BCH stance now that certain people forked off.
Several months ago we decided to start having 2 meet ups a month on different days of the week to give people with different evenings off work a chance to attend. In October we had the first BCH/ETH event after DEVCON in an attempt to raise cooperation between our communities. It was our biggest event and I think it was a great success. It is also where it dawned upon me where I think there is a big hole in the BCH space. A hole I think I can fill.
I could go into detail about all the projects and great things going on and that excite me in the BCH world like SLP tokens and cash fusion and on and on but that is not really part of my story… yet.
In the tradition of the HODL typo, I am glad to have had my own personal one with “Now this is intheresting”. I hope you found reading 1 person’s journey “**intheresting**”.
So I will end it here. Thank you for taking the time to read my Bit-bio. At the moment I am working on my most ambitious project ever. If it works out I will have a lot more to say about and contribute to BCH in the future.
**Let’s build better cash for the world!**
-CL
@CheapLightning
