Bitcoin Association Team Grows

At Bitcoin Association, we know growth of the Bitcoin SV ecosystem depends on more developers becoming skilled and interested in building useful applications on the BSV blockchain. Therefore, one of our major priorities for 2020 is to launch a comprehensive BSV developer education and curriculum program. Earlier this year, we hired Brendan Lee to serve as Development and Training Manager. Further supporting this mission, we are pleased to announce two new members to the Bitcoin Association team. Both Joshua Henslee and Evan Freeman bring a wealth of knowledge and skills to our developer education/curriculum program.

Joshua Henslee – Content Contributor

Joshua Henslee is an experienced ERP/software consultant and is based in San Jose, California. His passion for Bitcoin began in 2018 and led him to leave his consulting job in late 2019 to work full time in BSV. His goal is to help educate, build and form long term relationships in the Bitcoin SV society.

Evan Freeman – Curriculum Specialist

Evan Freeman is a technology educator/researcher who is curious and passionate about the structure and incentives that allow for a scaled Bitcoin to facilitate a truly global digital economy and bring about a new era in the internet revolution. As a student of one of the earliest online high schools as well as having built a career in various fields within technology and education for over a decade, Evan realizes the importance of being able to engage students in ways that are fundamentally designed to inspire and challenge.

Evan states: “Bitcoin SV has and continues to prove many wrong both in scalability and usability not because Satoshi’s design is defying the odds, but rather because many of these perceptions of what constitutes Bitcoin are inaccurate, and that the design itself is not only sound and scales on-chain, but it is significantly more dynamic then many, including myself, fully realize. That is because Bitcoin is very much a crowning technological achievement that remains shrouded in mystery. It’s capacity and capabilities are a prize to be uncovered by those open and curious enough to learn, build and push the limits of this system.”

BSV Dragon Program – China

In 2019, , Bitcoin Association has developed a Chinese based content localization team that consists of over 35 contributors that help create BSV content, translate critical news and research as well as help with Chinese language video production to advance information about BSV. This group of community contributors known as the “BSV Dragons” have 3 team leaders in China- Ryan Zhu, Huang Yue and Jianmei- while the overall program managed by Bitcoin Association’s China Manager Lise Li. The pilot was such a success in China, the Dragon Program is already being rolled out into other countries and languages.

Bitcoin SV Road Trip – Beijing, China

Bitcoin SV leading voices Craig Wright and Jimmy Nguyen took a road trip last week to Beijing, as to bring knowledge of Bitcoin SV as a blockchain technology to China.. The road trip included lectures to students at Tsinghua University, as well as speaking appearances and meetings with leading representatives of business and technology at the very first BSV China Conference. The road trip began at Tsinghua University, the number one academic institution in China and the entire region of Asia. The Tsinghua International Blockchain Association (TIBA), in cooperation with Bitcoin Association, organized this “History of Bitcoin” event and welcomed over 50 attendees including students, alumni and tech enthusiasts. Special lectures on why Bitcoin SV is “The Original Bitcoin & Enterprise Blockchain” by Jimmy Nguyen and “Hashing and History of Peer Systems” by Dr. Craig Wright, Chief Scientist of nChain were well received by the attendees.

Bitcoin Association then held an inaugural mini-conference for China that saw people flying in from all corners of the country to visit the Conrad Beijing hotel for this special occasion. The 1st BSV China conference featured speeches by Jimmy and Craig, as well as a series of presentations and discussions by BSV developers and homegrown Chinese projects such as Weiblock, Showpay, FastPay Button, DID-Bank, Blue-S and ForBSV. It concluded with another fireside chat between Jimmy and Craig to discuss why Bitcoin was created.

The attendees included a mix of developers and leaders working on projects within BSV that were yet to launch. Critical to the success of the events has been Bitcoin Association’s local team on the ground which includes country manager Lise Li and China Ambassador Lin Zheming, CEO of Mempool.

CHAINSIGHTS Award

Whilst in China, Bitcoin Association Founding President Jimmy Nguyen accepted a CHAINSIGHTS award in Beijing on behalf of the Bitcoin SV Node project, which was recognised as one of the Blockchain Technology Breakthroughs of the Year. The award acknowledges blockchain applications that “took the lead in combining blockchain technology with actual application scenarios in 2019.”

The accolade was presented at the red-carpet EDGE Awards hosted in conjunction with the T-EDGE technology conference. The event is one of biggest technology summits in the country, organized by Chinese tech media outlet TMTPost and blockchain news and data provider ChainDD.

Australia Workshops

Steve Shadders was recently in Australia and took the opportunity to gather in one place all the Australian and New Zealand based nChain developers, along with many of the Australian based Bitcoin SV application developers. The result was a one-day workshop followed by an even larger public meetup. The workshop session covered many areas including:

• Nature of Consensus rules – consensus and validation

• Genesis changes • 0-conf/Miner ID

• Identity

• Transaction fees

• Post-Genesis multisig

Aside from getting a wider understanding of the impacts of Genesis across the ecosystem, one of the key outcomes was a very broad-based consensus on the future direction that transaction fee management needs to move towards.

Bitcoin SV Node News – Genesis Hard Fork

The Genesis hard fork is scheduled for February 4, 2020. To ensure everything goes smoothly for the return to the original protocol, the Bitcoin SV Node Team has announced a testing and implementation plan to inform and guide all BSV services in the lead up to the date.

Outlined at their dedicated technical support page, the BSV Node Team recommends all users running the BSV Node software follow the steps they’ve outlined as early as possible. That includes operators of mining nodes, as well as as all “blockchain listeners” – anyone running an instance of the Bitcoin SV Node software who do not write transactions to the blockchain – such as applications, wallets and exchanges.

In preparation, the team has developed two public testnets: Genesis Testnet (GT) is the first and Genesis Reset (GR) is the second. GT will be set to post-Genesis activation, running on the testnet starting in December 2019 and activating on the mainnet on February 4, 2020. More technical details about both testnets along with a support channel where you can access members of the Bitcoin SV Node Team can be found on their support page.

Further details from the team will be coming soon, and a second phase of security auditing will be implemented in December. You are all encouraged to check in on their support page for updates, or by joining their Telegram group.

Satoshi Shout-Out

This time, we are giving multiple Satoshi Shout-Outs.

First, we would like to recognise the work of Bitcoin SV Node Technical Director Steve Shadders, Lead Developer Daniel Connolly and the team at nChain for their work on the code for the Genesis hard fork. In less than two months, one of the most significant events in Bitcoin’s history will unfold and it is thanks to this hardworking team that Satoshi Vision is being fulfilled.

We would also like to send a special shout out to Bitcoin Association’s very own China team – country Manager Lise Li and Ambassador Lin Zheming, CEO of Mempool for their amazing work in organising the Bitcoin SV Road Trip to Beijing and for their ongoing work in bringing Satoshi Vision to China.