| Respondent Id | 10566090078 |
|---|---|
| Application Date | 2019-03-02 12:21:13 |
| Application Language | English |
| Applicant City | New York |
| Applicant State/Province | New York |
| Applicant Country | United States |
| What languages do you speak? | English |
| 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? | Bachelor’s degree (for example: BA. BS) |
| Please describe your experience in the Crypto/Blockchain space, if any? | Mined bitcoin on my laptop in 2011. Currently mining Grin. |
| Are you an individual or a group? | Individual |
| Node City | New York |
| Node State | New York |
| Node Country | United States |
| For which networks Have you ever operated a node? | Bitcoin (BTC, BCH, etc), Ethereum (ETH, ETC, etc), Grin |
| What kind of improvements would you like to see in Elixxir nodes vs. previous the previous nodes you have supported? | More focus on reliability, uptime, logging, alarming and overall usage geared towards node operators. |
| What are potential setbacks preventing you from operating an Elixxir node? | None at the moment. Potential Operating Risks: 1. Single workstation is a single-point of HW failure. 2. Shared consumer-grade gigabit ethernet is a single-point of network failure. 3. Unknown divergence between mixnodes network throughput and latency tolerances in a production environment vs. theoretical model 4. Unknown operational administrative overhead for Elixxir node(s). |
| What is a reasonable maximum connection speed on which you could operate a BetaNet node in your geographic region? (Where 0 = 10 Megabits/second, and 100 = 10 Gigabits/second) | 66 |
| What is a reasonable uptime estimate you can provide for your BetaNet node? (As a percentage) | 75 |
| Please estimate the cost of electricity in the geographic area where your BetaNet node will be running. . | 23.21¢ per 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? (Where 0 = 1 hour/month, and 100 = 20 hours/month) | 100 |
| If you were selected to run a BetaNet node, would it run on your own hardware or be deployed to cloud-based servers? | Hardware |
| In what type of environment would this server be located? | Personal Home |
| Do you have past experience deploying hardware servers in a datacenter? | Yes (please describe) |
| Do you already own sufficient hardware to meet the published Elixxir BetaNet node specifications? | Yes (Please list specs) |
| Yes (Please list specs) | 1x Intel Core i9-7920X (12 core), 2x Titan RTX GPUs (24 GB) with NVLink, 128 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD + 4 TB HDD (https://lambdalabs.com/deep-learning/workstations/2-gpu) |
| Do you have hardware you would like to use but does not meet the stated BetaNet node specs? If so, please provide specs on that hardware below: | N/A |
| Do you have past experience deploying servers to cloud-based services? | Yes (please specify) |
| Yes (please specify) | Public cloud services: Amazon Web Services EC2, Google GCP, DigitalOcean Private cloud infrastructure: VMWare vSphere, Openstack, Ericsson UNICA, Cisco UCS, Huawei vMSE |
| Why do you want to be a node? | I have remained actively interested in cryptocurrencies and blockchains since CPU-mining in 2011. David Chaum's vision and insight around precomputed keys for a decentralized messaging and payment network are *unique*. The combination of Elixxir's unique value-add and intellectual pedigree are sufficiently intriguing that I have deemed the project worth investing time and resources to assess Elixxir's feasability for eventual production use and mass consumer adoption. The best way to execute the feasibility study is to be an active participant of the community, technology and network. |
| How did you originally hear about Elixxir? | Word of Mouth |
| Which current Elixxir communities are you a member of? | Telegram, Discord, Medium |
| Are you an active member of those communities? | No |
| What specifically, interests you about the Elixxir platform? | The Elixxir platform hit our radar due to two distinct factors: 1) David Chaum 2) Claims of scale, speed and privacy - Speed achieved through precomputations - Default-on privacy achieved through cMix mixnets - Scalability achieved through node-teams - Strict, immutable and verifiable consensus integrity mechanisms The above factors were sufficiently differentiated and trustworthy enough to trigger further investment and investigation into Elixxir. |
| Outside of Elixxir communities, are you an active participant in other node or developer community groups? If so, which ones? | |
| Have you ever attended a blockchain conference? If so, which one(s)? | No. |
| As part of growing the Elixxir community, are you willing to create content as part of operating an Elixxir 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. | Yes (how much content on a monthly basis?) |
| If yes, how much content on a monthly basis? | I would consider creating unofficial/community Elixxir content semi-anonymously on a bi-weekly basis, depending on the Elixxir ecosystem's needs. |
| What is the difference between decentralized networks and distributed networks, and where on the decentralization spectrum do you sit? | Distributed networks refer strictly to geographic dispersion/redundancy, and do not opine on governance mechanisms. Decentralized networks are distributed, which also imply permissionless participation and protocol-based governance and consensus. This is not a spectrum. I love decentralized networks that empower individuals to provide a necessary counterbalance to powerful centralized organizations. |
| As best as you can given currently available information, please describe the value proposition of the Elixxir platform and how it differs from other current blockchain solutions. | Elixxir will realize a decentralized, private, and secure planatary scale messaging and payments network. |
| Privacy by Default is a goal of the Elixxir Platform. In your opinion, why is Privacy by Default critical for the future of the internet? | Privacy by Default is critical for the future of the internet because we have seen, and are continuing to see, accelerated uses of data exhaust and meta-data used against individuals by powerful corporations or governments. Privacy by Choice (i.e. opt-in) has been shown to be limited as evidenced by three very different examples: 1. Zcash has opt-in privacy (i.e. shielded transactions), but the effectiveness of shielded transactions is severely curtailed if one is a) careless; b) counterparty uses unshielded (public) address. 2. Tor's effectiveness is proportional to the size of the Tor network. Tor can be considered "Privacy by Default", while the rest of the internet remains "Privacy by Choice". Tor traffic is easy to spot, and easy to filter, especially in populaces (digital or physical) that do not normally use Tor. Thus, "private" traffic can draw increased and unwanted scrutiny by powerful state or corporate actors, which may induce a chilling effect. Traffic that is "Private by Default" would make this form of "privacy beacon" meta-flag less effective. 3. Organ donation participation in countries with a default-on policy is 90% (e.g. Austria) versus 15% for countries with opt-in organ donation policies (e.g. USA). This is due to the status-quo bias and the power of "trivial inconvenience". The paper is by Shai Davidai, Thomas Gilovich, and Lee D. Rossb (d.o.i 10.1073/pnas.1211695109). Democratically-minded individuals and societies need more powerful networks, tools and countermeasures against runaway abuses by governments and corporate interests. The three examples provide concrete examples as to why Privacy by Default is a first good step in this direction. |
| Tags | Individual, United States, English |
I appreciate the thoroughness of these responses – complete with citations. What do people think about applicants with this depth of knowledge?