Hello Everyone, it’s me! Chris DeRose here…
What’s up party people! If you’re reading this, you probably know who I am already. But in case you don’t recognize me, I’m the incumbent Community Director of the Counterparty foundation.
https://www.chrisderose.com/assets/profile-c5752821cd35dcd0d30b5729e0c51014.jpeg
- Proof of Stake (Wallet)
- Proof of Indentity (Broadcast)
Who am I?
I’m a journalist, a programmer, and a public advocate of crypto-currency that lives in South Florida. I’ve run a technology consulting company in Fort Lauderdale for a little over ten years, and have been programming in some form or another for almost twenty years. I discovered Bitcoin sometime in late 2010, and have been increasingly investing my time and attention to the crypto-currency space ever since.
For a more detailed account of who I am, head on over to chrisderose.com.
What have I done for you thus far?
Besides the normal day-to-day job of representing counterparty’s interests online, in chat rooms, and forums, I have also provided consultation to various members of industry, bitcoin companies, and venture capitalists.
In a more public capacity, I have achieved the following in my very short three-month interim term thus far:
- Published a number of articles on Counterparty public journals, representing counterparty’s values
- Wrote a counterparty_ruby gem for interfacing with the Counterpartyd
server in ruby - Delivered numerous talks on Counterparty at conferences
- Started a youtube channel dedicated to educating the public about Counterparty, which has (at the time of writing) 75 videos and a bit over ten-thousand views
- Won the Miami Bitcoin Hackathon with a submission that is primarily designed around the Counterparty software
My Values and Beliefs
I think the values of all candidates for this position should be delineated in a formal capacity, and as such, I’m going to outline my values below. Additionally here’s my long-term forecast of our Bitcoin future.
Bitcoin Maximalism
I am an unapologetic Bitcoin maximalist. I have seen countless alt-chains come and go, and while there may be room for a chain other than Bitcoin’s, I don’t believe it’s worth our time to be distracted by this remote possibility at the current time.
Meta-coins are with us, not against us. Alt-chains are against us
I do not make disparaging statements about Omni, or Colored Coins. While I believe Counterparty is the superior technology in the metacoin space, I also believe that there is benefit in competing metacoin implementations. I believe our actual competition exists with technologies such as Ripple and (maybe) Ethereum/Bitshares.
Counterparty is Bitcoin
Central to all my advocacy is the equivocation of Counterparty and Bitcoin. Counterparty is to Bitcoin what CSS is to HTML. This is the primary reason I gravitated to Counterparty in the first place.
Mobile Integration should be a primary focus
I believe that the best place for Counterparty to grow is via integration with the mobile Bitcoin wallet designers. This integration may take a while, but I do believe that Counterparty has a very immediate ability to provide “killer apps” once tokens are send and receivable in user’s preffered Bitcoin wallet software.
Counterparty’s primary source of growth will come from its developers
Developers, developers, developers! While competing 2.0 platforms are primarily focused on growing their community via fundraising and stock-ownership, my belief is that the way to grow a 2.0 community is by courting to developers, and their projects.
XCP is not a pump
I do not pump XCP. Frankly I’d prefer XCP to stay ‘cheap’ as I believe this will aid in our ability to court developers. I don’t discourage people from purchasing XCP, but I don’t encourage people either. I don’t believe that we should be pumping counterparty as an altcoin.
Counterparty is Open Source. Not a company.
Ethereum, Bitshares, and countless others in this space “fundraised” for their development. This makes them, IMO, companies and not open-source platforms. Counterparty is a sustainable project in the same way Bitcoin is a sustainable project, because it never raised money. There is a uniquely egalitarian structure to what we’re doing in the 2.0 space. This is an important feature of Counterparty, and should be expressed at such.
Bitcoin is not a currency
To be clear, Bitcoin does all of the things that currencies do, but Bitcoin does so much more! As such I have adopted the opinion that Bitcoin is a protocol for settlement and value transfer. Bitcoins themselves are a useful commodity, which will be expended as the protocol grows. Counterparty is a logical outcome of this belief.
Having fun and taking our time!
There are many advocates in this space which feel that cryptocurrency should be presented as a imminently disruptive technology that will cause the incumbents to fail spectacularly and in short time. Or alternatively, there are those that feel Bitcoin will be co-opted by suits from wall street, and that professionalism and conformity is the path towards adoption. I believe that this movement will take a good while to manifest into the disruptive force it’s being billed as. I further believe that a message that provides quality content, coupled with responsible fun, will be more accessible to the general public and provide a more sustainable growth path for us, as our community matures.
Ain’t no party like a Counterparty!
Hopefully you like my platform and I can continue working for you! I do this work for fun, the challenge of understanding the world around me, and the satisfaction of making a difference.
Thank-you for your consideration everyone! It’s been an honor to be your director for this short time thus far, and I would love to keep the party going all year long. (Later Party People!)