I think this is an excellent idea. I consider myself to be extremely data-driven and logical in my thinking, and have still fallen victim to thinking "oh great, what's <person I've been annoyed by in the past> on about now?" when seeing something posted or proposed.
And vice versa, it prevents people from being more partial to a bad or not so great idea simply because it was posited by someone they hold in high regard. Simple, yet effective. I would actually even go a step further and say that all BIPs should be done this way as a matter of procedure, I can't think of a downside. On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 10:46 AM Chris Stewart via bitcoin-dev < bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: > As everyone in the Bitcoin space knows, there is a massive scaling debate > going on. One side wants to increase the block size via segwit, while the > other side wants to increase via hard fork. I have strong opinions on the > topic but I won’t discuss them here. The point of the matter is we are > seeing the politicization of protocol level changes. The critiques of these > changes are slowly moving towards critiques based on who is submitting the > BIP -- not what it actually contains. This is the worst thing that can > happen in a meritocracy. > > *Avoiding politicization of technical changes in the future* > > I like what Tom Elvis Judor did when he submitted his MimbleWimble white > paper to the technical community. He submitted it under a pseudonym, over > TOR, onto a public IRC channel. No ego involved — only an extremely > promising paper. Tom (and Satoshi) both understood that it is only a matter > of time before who they are impedes technical progress of their system. > > I propose we move to a pseudonymous BIP system where it is required for > the author submit the BIP under a pseudonym. For instance, the format could > be something like this: > > BIP: 1337 > > Author: 9458b7f9f76131f18823d73770e069d55beb2...@protonmail.com > > BIP content down here > > The hash “6f3…9cd0” is just my github username, christewart, concatenated > with some entropy, in this case these bytes: > 639c28f610edcaf265b47b0679986d10af3360072b56f9b0b085ffbb4d4f440b > > and then hashed with RIPEMD160. I checked this morning that protonmail can > support RIPEMD160 hashes as email addresses. Unfortunately it appears it > cannot support SHA256 hashes. > > There is inconvenience added here. You need to make a new email address, > you need to make a new github account to submit the BIP. I think it is > worth the cost -- but am interested in what others think about this. I > don't think people submitting patches to a BIP should be required to submit > under a pseudonym -- only the primary author. This means only one person > has to create the pseudonym. From a quick look at the BIPs list it looks > like the most BIPs submitted by one person is ~10. This means they would > have had to create 10 pseudonyms over 8 years -- I think this is > reasonable. > > *What does this give us?* > > This gives us a way to avoid politicization of BIPs. This means a BIP can > be proposed and examined based on it’s technical merits. This levels the > playing field — making the BIP process even more meritocratic than it > already is. > > If you want to claim credit for your BIP after it is accepted, you can > reveal the preimage of the author hash to prove that you were the original > author of the BIP. I would need to reveal my github username and > “639c28f610edcaf265b47b0679986d10af3360072b56f9b0b085ffbb4d4f440b” > > *The Future* > Politicization of bitcoin is only going to grow in the future. We need to > make sure we maintain principled money instead devolving to a system where > our money is based on a democratic vote — or the votes of a select few > elites. We need to vet claims by “authority figures” whether it is Jihan > Wu, Adam Back, Roger Ver, or Greg Maxwell. I assure you they are human — > and prone to mistakes — just like the rest of us. This seems like a simple > way to level the playing field. > > Thoughts? > > -Chris > > > > _______________________________________________ > bitcoin-dev mailing list > bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev > -- Andrew Johnson
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