| Respondent ID | 11626885809 |
|---|---|
| Application Date | 05/22/2020 12:08:33 PM |
| Applicant City | Graz |
| Applicant State/Province | Styria |
| Applicant Country | Austra |
| What languages do you speak? | German, English, Italian, BCS |
| What is your occupation? | IT |
| How many years experience in your field? | 16+ |
| What is the highest degree or level of school you have completed? | Graduated Secondary or High School, or equivalent |
| Did you purchase xx coins in the xx coin sale? | No |
| Are you an individual or a group? | Individual |
| Node City | Graz |
| Node Province | Styria |
| Node Country | Austria |
| For which networks Have you ever operated a node? | Bitcoin (BTC, BCH, etc) |
| What kind of improvements would you like to see in xx network nodes vs. previous nodes you have supported? | better scalability and privacy |
| What are potential setbacks preventing you from operating an xx network node? | |
| What is a reasonable uptime estimate you can provide for your BetaNet node? | 100 |
| Please estimate the cost of electricity in the geographic area where your BetaNet node will be running. | 0.25€/kWh |
| On a monthly basis, how much time can you publicly commit to dedicating toward governance if you were selected as a BetaNet node operator?` | 40 |
| Connection speed | 90Mbps |
| In what type of environment would this server be located? | office |
| Do you have past experience deploying hardware servers in a datacenter? | No |
| Do you already own sufficient hardware to meet the published xx network BetaNet Node specifications (found here)? | No |
| Specs | |
| Why do you want to be a node? | Because I have plenty of experience running and maintaining dedicated Linux servers and enjoy doing so, want to support the establishment of a scalable and private blockchain and hope to earn some xx coins that way. |
| How did you originally hear about the xx network? | Word of Mouth |
| Which current xx network communities are you a member of? | Telegram, BetaNet Forum |
| What specifically, interests you about the xx network platform? | Its consensus mechanism, which is considerably different from most other networks. It's neither PoW, nor some kind of BFT-style PoS. I like that it scales with the number of nodes. And of course I'm excited about a cryptography pioneer entering the space. |
| Outside of xx network communities, are you an active participant in other node or developer community groups? If so, which ones? | I'm well connected in Ethereum community, e.g. with Igor Barinov of poa.network and Fabian Vogelsteller of lukso.network, with both of whom we collaborate for development of the OpenEthereum client and the POSDAO consensus contracts (see github.com/lab10-coop). I'm usually working in the background, but am attending conferences and meetups, and occasionally I've also been presenting, for example at SWARM summit 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXHSOB7MuSw |
| Have you ever attended a blockchain conference? If so, which one(s)? | HCCP 17, 18, Dappcon 18, 19, Devcon 4 (Ethereum) and likely a few more I don't remember now |
| Do you have past experience managing communities or creating content to be distributed across social media? Please enter details for all with which you are comfortable or have experience: | Meetup group management: https://www.meetup.com/BlockchainHub-Graz/, Community Management Other: https://www.the-blockchain.com/2016/12/06/status-etherisc-named-winners-online-blockchain-startup-contest/ |
| As part of growing the xx network community, are you willing to create content as part of operating an xx network BetaNet node? Examples would be node setup & on-boarding review vlog post, bi-weekly twitter update, medium review of on-going node operational process, etc. | No |
| Would you be interested in helping to lead the development of the next xx network community? | No |
| Why do you want to run a node in the xx network? | To protect the privacy of political speech, To protect private personal communication around health and lifestyle issues from mass surveillance and abuse by centralized organizations, To promote quantum secure distributed systems, To earn xx coins, To help build David Chaum's vision of a decentralized world, To contribute to a promising project, To undo the centralization of the internet by big tech companies, To help build true digital cash to fuel a decentralized economy, To reverse the political centralization of legal, police, and military organizations which favor the wealthy and powerful |
| Other Reasons | to learn new things and gain new experiences |
| What is the difference between decentralized networks and distributed networks, and where on the decentralization spectrum do you sit? | The terms seem to have different meaning for different people. My perception is that distributed usually refers more to the architectural component, with focus on location (e.g. edge servers for low delays), while decentralized is usually associated with the political components about how control over the network is exerted. Personally, I support the original vision of the Internet as a neutral space which no individual or organization or cartel controls. A Blockchain network extends that vision by providing a global singleton of cryptographically authenticated and timestamped data, which happens to be useful for a lot of applications - most importantly: neutral digital money. |
| As best as you can given currently available information, please describe the value proposition of the xx network platform and how it differs from other current blockchain solutions. | xx network provides neutral base infrastructure for secure (confidential, tamper proof, censorship resistant) payments and messaging. Crucially, it does so with a consensus protocol which scales with network size. |
| Privacy by Default is a goal of the xx network Platform. In your opinion, why is Privacy by Default critical for the future of the internet? | Because if privacy isn't on by default, just enabling it can already be a threat for those who need that privacy most. It's also important because if we have doubts about the confidentiality of their communication, we tend to self-censor - often sub-consciously. |
| In your opinion, what threat, if any, do quantum computers pose toward decentralized systems? What about centralized systems? | They may allow powerful adversaries to weaken non-quantum-proof cryptography to the point of being able to break it. For decentralized system, this may result in a loss of confidence in the system. In the case of Bitcoin for example, this may lead to prolonged discussions about the severity of the threat and about how to deal with it, probably leading to even more forks than the block size debate has already caused. In case of centralized systems, it's probably an issue mainly for legacy systems which are difficult to be updated. In any case, the prospect of quantum computers already today contributes to a general sentiment of many that having secure communication is impossible for normal people and that the fight for it was already lost. |
4 Likes
You could be a worthy betanode runner, assuming your connection speed reached minimum requirements (100 Mbps). Could it?
Thx for considering me.
Regarding connection speed: The form item for connection speed was a bit weird (a slider without clear label). I basically had to guess which position of the slider corresponds to 100 Mbps. That’s the speed of the connection I would use.
A few more remarks:
Do you have past experience deploying hardware servers in a datacenter?
Here I was not sure how to interpret. If it’s about colocation of own hardware, the answer is no. If it’s about running root servers, it’s yes (several of them for quite a few years).
Another small correction: In the list of conferences, it should be “HCPP”, not “HCCP”. That’s the “Hacker Congress Paralelni Polis” in Prague. Also, I attended in 2016, not 2018. Was my first deep dive into the crypto community.
For which networks Have you ever operated a node?
Not sure if that was my mistake, but it should also list Ethereum, xdai and ARTIS.
There’s a few others I briefly ran back in 2016-2017 when I was experimenting with everything I found, e.g. Monero, Zcash etc.
And of course I also ran nodes of my self-written blockchain 
1 Like
Thanks for elaborating, hope to join forces with you during betanet 