This Interview was held on Sunday, 14.07.2019 by Samus Aran via telegram messenger in real time. Questions were not provided in prior. The interviewee was Harry1453 from the BAT, who is among the most active and important devs for BURST.

Samus Aran

Dear Harry, it’s a pleasure talking to you.

Harry

Thank you, you too!

Samus Aran

I think most people of the community don’t know much about you, aside you are a BAT member and focus on development. Can you tell us something about your background? E.g. prior relevant education, job-experience, age, interests?

Harry

I try to remain mostly anonymous, though a few people know that I am quite young. I am mainly interested in software / electronics and BURST is not my only interest. I have a job in software development which I have been doing for 3 years. I am entirely self-taught when it comes to software development.

Samus Aran

So you have no corresponding degree or title?

Harry

No. I am a student, so do not have a degree yet.

Samus Aran

Your github profile says, you signed up in March 2018, were that your first rather professional coding projects?

Harry

No, that was simply when I started using GitHub. I have been coding in a professional environment since 2016 and have been coding as a hobby for several years before that.

Samus Aran

Your avatar shows young guy with a camera, is it you and do you like photography?

Harry

Yes, it is me from about 2 years back. I have an interest in photography, yes.

Samus Aran

It’s a cool hobby, I like it as well.

Harry

Thank you!

Samus Aran

How did you first come in contact with BURST?

Harry

I have been a fan of Linus Tech Tips for years and first heard of BURST through a discussion on The WAN Show. I became very interested and started mining and experimenting writing software (This was before they did a video on BURST). I released a couple of applications for BURST throughout 2018.

Samus Aran

Yea, Linus got quite a community. So what made you curious about BURST then?

Harry

I already had an interest in cryptocurrencies. The proof of capacity got me interested and the Dymaxion whitepaper fascinated me so I tagged along, I was not particularly involved at first (This is early 2018).

Samus Aran

So that’s why you chose BURST instead of other cryptos?

Harry

Because it was a smaller coin with an active community that I thought potentially had a future.

Samus Aran

How comes you wanted to participate in BURSTdevelopment?

Harry

Initially as I was hoping to develop things that were new to BURST, such as the mobile explorer (my first project), whilst simultaneously learning how everything worked in a hands-on way.

Samus Aran

Would you recommend this approach to people interested in BURST development as well?

Harry

Yes. Now that libraries are available for Java, JavaScript, C++ and Swift, there is no excuse not to get involved and start building something to learn more about BURST in a productive way.

Samus Aran

So where would one start? Like a website for orientation?

Harry

Try to think of something that you would legitimately use, or try to do something better. You could design a website that provides statistics about the network, for example (an idea off the top of my head).

Samus Aran

What are your current projects regarding BURST? Development, or else.

Harry

There are many simultaneous projects, some of which I cannot talk about, but the main ones are BRS future development, Ledger Nano S integration, completing Phoenix so that it may replace the current BRS UI, moving BURSTkit4j to a stable state, improving the pool software which has just reached a stable state. There is always stuff going on, for example today I made various improvements to QBundle and updated the BURST Wiki site with recent changes.

Samus Aran

Isn’t it difficult to have an overview with so many simultaneous projects?

Harry

Yes, I often struggle to keep up, and stuff ends up getting left for a long time.

Samus Aran

How is progress with the Ledger Nano S integration?

Harry

We have a working app and a working Phoenix integration, but there is a bug that needs fixing before we can send to Ledger for review.

Samus Aran

Can you give us an expected timeframe for release?

Harry

Unfortunately no. We do not know when this bug will be fixed and after that are at the mercy of the review schedule of Ledger.

Samus Aran

Is there a planned Trezor integration?

Harry

Not currently, as I do not have one to develop using.

Samus Aran

How are your priorities among your projects? There are your interests, community demands and probably something that would be most necessary from an objective perspective.

Harry

My top priority is addressing any urgent issues. After that generally comes community demands (depending on the demand) and things I am interested in doing.

Samus Aran

How is the cooperation with other BURST devs doing?

Harry

Good, I am working with others both inside and outside of BAT.

Samus Aran

What is your idea about other projects, like Rosetta or BlockTalk?

Harry

BlockTalk is a very promising project that has huge potential, and which I have been helping with a little bit. Rosetta we have not seen anything of, so I cannot comment.

Samus Aran

… and in general about AT and smart contracts?

Harry

I like the idea of smart contracts, though we need to ensure that we develop things that are actually useful, that smart contracts are properly tested before being used on mainnet, and that we keep the BRS smart contract VM maintained to minimize the performance impact on the chain.

Samus Aran

So you don’t see a purpose on first sight?

Harry

I certainly see potential for purposes. Ethereum has proved that smart contracts are extremely useful, I see no reason why ATs would be any less useful.

Samus Aran

How do you think BURST should be improved?

Harry

I think that BURST needs a revolutionary upgrade to put it ahead of other cryptocurrencies in some way, to make it stand out in a way that is more significant than an alternative consensus protocol. I do not know what that will turn out to be at this stage.

Samus Aran

How about the Dymaxion?

Harry

That could be what BURST needs, and it could be what it gets. I cannot say much further on the subject of Dymaxion, but it is being researched.

Samus Aran

Based on the status quo, where do you see BURST in 2 years?

Harry

We have new things in the works that, if used properly, could see BURST amongst the top cryptos, but it comes down to how the wider community and the general public make use of these new technologies.

Samus Aran

So how could BURST become a mainstream crypto?

Harry

That is a complicated question, in my opinion, because what makes a crypto a mainstream crypto still appears to be very random (Look at all of those random bitcoin forks that are mainstream). The honest answer is I don’t know, but I hope that new technology, possibly Dymaxion, could take BURST there.

Samus Aran

Do you see progress about BURST’s reputation after the founding of the BMF yet?

Harry

I think that the BMF have helped to keep people involved in the last 6 months which have been rough at times for BURST.

Samus Aran

Back to AT’s: If you could make any changes to the underlying AT virtual machine, what would they be?

Harry

I do not know enough about the instruction set to say much, but at a high level, better support for different transaction types, such as sending multi outs and performing other standard functions that are currently not possible, e.g. lookingup an account’s name.

Samus Aran

What do you think about faucets: is there a way to spare faucets, to improve easiness of wallet usage? Does it make sense?

Harry

Our internal plans include an upgrade that will make faucets redundant, though this will be unveiled at a point when our first hard fork plans are finalized.

Samus Aran

What do think about cross-platform / cross-crypto mining, like FPGA / ASIC mining of BURST?

Harry

BURST is designed to be ASIC resistant. With regards to cross-crypto mining between, for example, BURST and BHD, I have no issue with it and never have done.

Samus Aran

So what could be a problem with ASIC mining? Why resistance?

Harry

ASICs hurt decentralization of mining. That is the main issue. That and the environmental concerns of massive mining power and competition.

Samus Aran

What’s the difference between PoC and PoS, and why isn’t BURST just another Ethereum coin?

Harry

Proof of Capacity is based on more storage = more blocks forged, whereas PoS is more stake = more blocks forged. Arguably, PoS makes the rich richer, and PoC is therefore fairer, as everyone has unused storage lying around. And BURST is not another Ethereum coin because this is a physical impossibility – it predates Ethereum.

Samus Aran

So Ethereum might have the advantage due to evolvement?

Harry

Ethereum is in some ways fundamentally different to BURST. It has a more active development community so has a clear advantage there.

Samus Aran

I read at other coins, that they have special environments to support development of code for their blockchain, could this be a future for BURST as well?

Harry

We have a public testnet, and facilities to run private development chains.

Samus Aran

I have been told you take part on the hackathon, what are your plans there?

Harry

I can’t reveal that at the moment but I am planning on participating.

Samus Aran

If you could have everything: what do you need or want to support BURST, maybe even better, in the future?

Harry

More time! I struggle to find time to work on BURST stuff in between everything else I have going on.

Samus Aran

What do you think are the best assets BURST has?

Harry

Proof of Capacity, the NXT core and ATs.

Samus Aran

… and on community side?

Harry

We are lucky to have a dedicated community, some of which have very good knowledge of the coin.

Samus Aran

Okay. Let’s come to the final questions:

Did I miss any important question?

Harry

I don’t think so.

Samus Aran

Is there anything else you`d like to say?

Harry

Not at this time.

Samus Aran

Dear Harry, it was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for your precious time, have a great time and may the BURST be with you!

Harry

Thank you!

If you have any suggestions about a new interviewee, questions, critics or BURST donations please contact Samus Aran (@metroid_prim3 – BURST-BH45-99RM-9M4L-DGJS7)

or Harry1453 (@harry1453 – BURST-W5YR-ZZQC-KUBJ-G78KB)

via telegram or BURST wallet.