Celebrating Permissionless Development (Two CHIPs, One Tech)

It's now been about a year since I decided to get involved in BCH development. When I started this journey, I didn't have the knowledge required to arrive where we are today, but I was confident in my capacity to attain it as I go, and in my capacity to make noise required to get things moving! I never asked for permission, I just did what I believed needed to be done, because I wanted P2PKH tokens, which I wanted because I believed they're important for BCH future. I know I ruffled some feathers here and there and went over the top at times, but now looking back it was a fun ride!

This was my introduction that I wrote on BCH Discord on 2021-02-14:

Hi all, I want to help move group tokens forward, I saw the interview with Andrew and George and got excited about them, then I read up more, about both group tokens and cash tokens, and figured that while both seem like good solutions, group tokens would enable competitive advantage whereas cash tokens would be playing catch up with other blockchains. I intend to keep the group tokens idea afloat and help bring it before more eyes until either: 1. I give up or have my mind changed about them 2. They get adopted :slight_smile: I'm halfway through that document Andrew prepared and I want to use it as basis to prepare something easier to read, something higher level, that can be passed around other stakeholders and will actually get read. Focus should be on identifying stakeholders (users, businesses, miners, node operators, etc.) and what group tokens would cost them and what benefits they would provide. My intuition here is that they could provide a lot of value to our ecosystem at a small cost (slightly changing the slope of linear scaling). I have work to do to confirm or invalidate this assumption but you have to start somewhere...

Thanks to everyone who's interacted with me since then I learned A LOT, and had my mind changed many times, in a good way, about what Group needs to be, not whether it's a good idea or not. I like to believe I did my part in opening people's eyes that it IS a great idea, one that will bring a lot of value to BCH, and through this process we've gotten really close to the idea's final shape! That's how the Group CHIP got to v6.0 and is now titled "Unforgeable Groups", because it's all about enabling something more abstract, generic blockchain "primitives" that can let builders create amazing things, at no additional cost to our network, and allow users easy access to those products through easy "P2PKH" tokens, those that can interact with contracts and be moved around as easy and cheap as BCH!

Talking with @im_uname over the last few months, we were trying to find a minimal set of primitives that can later enable features/products that we can’t even imagine right now. We had no idea that at the same time Jason was doing a sort of “clean room design”, and now that he revealed it, all I can say is - it’s brilliant! It's a validation of everything we've been through! Quoting Jason:

I claim that these primitives are emergent from the design of the Bitcoin Cash virtual machine: I did not design them to accomplish a set of “features”, I just discovered they are missing.

We were on the same track all along, on the path of discovering the same jewel in "idea space". So, now we have not one, but two CHIPs, trying to capture almost the same idea! It's like we dug 2 tunnels to arrive to the same treasure! The digging paid off! And we didn't start digging from 0, I only continued where Andrew Stone had left it. Jason did good to list all of these "tunnels", now 5 of them in total :)

When Jason's CHIP landed, at first I was like, oh damn, 2 CHIPs now, this will spread us thin, it'll double the amount of effort required to move things forward, but on a second thought it’s awesome because Jason's CHIP is really good!! It’ll help more people grasp the idea, find their way through the tunnels, and make a stronger case for activating the tech, I don’t really care what we call it, CashTokens sounds good to me! :) Jason's writing is much more eloquent than mine. Mine is rather messy, but the ideas got through and that's what really matters, that's what this CHIP process is all about, path of discovery!

Thinking about how to avoid spreading ourselves thin I think I see a way: if we can converge on the same spec, we’ll have 2 CHIPs making a bullet-proof case for the same thing! 2 CHIPs, one tech!

For first step in that direction, I have edited mine to take out groupType (equivalent to Jason's <has_nonfungible>) into its own field to match the format. I was convinced by his rationale here. As discussion progresses, I hope to make some more edits, with the final goal of 2 CHIPs converging to a same specification!

Two CHIPs, one tech! <3

And then, you'll be reading whatever is more readable to you, it won't matter - it will be describing the same jewel from "idea space", and either CHIP will just be your guide to find the jewel!