[bitcoin-dev] CFP Bitcoin Scalability Workshop (Sept 12-13), Montreal Canada

Fri Aug 14 09:08:46 UTC 2015

Dear Mark,

Thank you for your email.

Registration <http://scalingbitcoin.brownpapertickets.com/> was opened on
Wednesday as planned and we list some initial background papers here:
https://scalingbitcoin.org/papers/

To encourage early submissions to help with planning, review and
circulation, we will accept on a rolling basis, expressions of interest and
proposals surrounding Bitcoin scalability *until 00.00 UTC Sept 1st 2015*.

Please email them to proposals at scalingbitcoin.org

I very much looking forward to meeting you and to the technical discussions
in Montreal next month!

Please feel free to also follow us on Twitter @ScalingBitcoin

Yours sincerely,

Pindar Wong

Chair, Montreal Workshop Planning Committee

Chairman, VeriFi (Hong Kong) Ltd.

On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 3:13 AM, Mark Friedenbach <mark at friedenbach.org>
wrote:

> I want to put a big thank-you out to Pindar, Warren, and others in the
> organizing committee who I know must have put in a lot of hours to make
> this happen. I will be attending, and I hope to see many of you there too.
> It is my sincere hope that the academic structure of a workshop will help
> break down some of the communication walls that have arisen in this debate,
> and help us all work towards finding a compromise towards scaling bitcoin,
> something we all want to see happen.
>
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 1:45 AM, Pindar Wong via bitcoin-dev <
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>
>> Bitcoin Scalability Workshops
>>
>> In recent months the Bitcoin development community has faced difficult
>> discussions of how to safely improve the scalability and decentralized
>> nature of the Bitcoin network. To aid the technical consensus building
>> process we are organizing a pair of workshops to collect technical
>> criteria, present proposals and evaluate technical materials and data with
>> academic discipline and analysis that fully considers the complex tradeoffs
>> between decentralization, utility, security and operational realities. This
>> may be considered as similar in intent and process to the NIST-SHA3 design
>> process where performance and security were in a tradeoff for a security
>> critical application.
>>
>> Since Bitcoin is a P2P currency with many stakeholders, it is important
>> to collect requirements as broadly as possible, and through the process
>> enhance everyone’s understanding of the technical properties of Bitcoin to
>> help foster an inclusive, transparent, and informed process.
>>
>> Those with technical interest are invited to participate in this pair of
>> workshops with the following intent:
>>
>> Phase 1: Scene setting, evaluation criteria, and tradeoff analysis.
>>
>> Montreal, Canada: September 12th-13th, 2015
>>
>> Scalability is not a single parameter; there are many opportunities to
>> make the Bitcoin protocol more efficient and better able to service the
>> needs of its growing userbase. Each approach to further scaling the Bitcoin
>> blockchain involves implicit trade offs of desired properties of the whole
>> system. As a community we need to raise awareness of the complex and subtle
>> issues involved, facilitate deeper research and testing of existing
>> proposals, and motivate future work in this area.
>>
>> The purpose of this workshop is to discuss the general tradeoffs and
>> requirements of any proposal to scale Bitcoin beyond its present limits.
>> Session topics are to include the presentation of experimental data
>> relating to known bottlenecks of Bitcoin’s continued growth and analysis of
>> implicit tradeoffs involved in general strategies for enabling future
>> growth.
>>
>> This event will not host sessions on the topic of any specific proposals
>> involving changes to the Bitcoin protocol. Such proposals would be the
>> topic of a 2nd, follow-on Phase 2 workshop described below; this event is
>> intended to “set the stage” for work on and evaluation of specific
>> proposals in the time between the workshops.
>>
>> Phase 2 will be planned out further as part of Phase 1 with input from
>> the participants.
>>
>> Phase 2: Presentation and review of technical proposals, with simulation,
>> benchmark results.
>>
>> Hong Kong, SAR, China: TBD Nov/Dec 2015
>>
>> Hopefully to be easier for the Chinese miners to attend, the second
>> workshop pertaining to actual block size proposals is to be planned for
>> Hong Kong roughly in the late November to December timeframe.
>>
>> The purpose of this workshop is to present and review actual proposals
>> for scaling Bitcoin against the requirements gathered in Phase 1. Multiple
>> competing proposals will be presented, with experimental data, and compared
>> against each other. The goal is to raise awareness of scalability issues
>> and build a pathway toward consensus for increasing Bitcoin’s transaction
>> processing capacity or, barring that, identify key areas of further
>> required research and next steps for moving forward.
>>
>> Preliminarily, Phase 2 will be a time to share results from experiments
>> performed as a result of Phase 1 and an opportunity to discuss new
>> developments.
>>
>> How do the Workshops work?
>>
>>    -
>>
>>    Both events will be live-streamed with remote participation
>>    facilitated via IRC for parallel online discussion and passing questions to
>>    the event.
>>    -
>>
>>    These workshops aim to facilitate the existing Bitcoin Improvement
>>    Proposals (BIP)[1] process. Most work will be done outside of the workshops
>>    in the intervening months. The workshops serve to be additive to the design
>>    and review process by raising awareness of diverse points of view, studies,
>>    simulations, and proposals.
>>    -
>>
>>    Travel, venue details, and accommodation recommendation are available
>>    at scalingbitcoin.org. Registration begins August 12th at an
>>    early-bird ticket price of $150 USD until September 3rd. The ticket prices
>>    do not come close to covering the venue expense and travel subsidies, hence
>>    the need for corporate sponsors.
>>    -
>>
>>    Please see the FAQ at scalingbitcoin.org which should answer most
>>    other questions.
>>
>>
>> Travel Subsidies for Independent/Academic Researchers
>>
>> There will be an application process for independent or academic
>> researchers to apply for travel assistance to help cover the expense of
>> airfare and hotel fees up to $1,000 per qualified presenter who intends to
>> give a presentation.  The four underwriters of this event have agreed to
>> jointly review applications and cover the travel subsidies for qualified
>> presenters. See scalingbitcoin.org for details.
>>
>> Sponsors of the Montreal Workshop
>>
>> The first workshop is hosted and with logistics handled by the Montreal
>> consultancy CryptoMechanics <http://cryptomechanics.com>.
>>
>> The Underwriters jointly responsible for venue expenses and researcher
>> travel subsidies are currently the MIT Digital Currency Initiative,
>> Chaincode Labs, Blockstream, and Chain.com.
>>
>> Current sponsors include: Cryptsy, BitcoinTalk, Final Hash, Blockstream,
>> MIT DCI, Chaincode Labs, IDEO Futures, Kraken, and Chain.com.
>>
>> Additional sponsors are needed. Please see scalingbitcoin.org for
>> sponsorship details or contact me directly via < pindar dot wong at
>> gmail.com >
>>
>> Online Workshop Resources
>>
>>    -
>>
>>    Bitcoin-Workshops-Announce list
>>
>>    https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-workshops-announce
>>    -
>>
>>    Bitcoin-Workshops discussion list
>>    https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-workshops
>>    -
>>
>>    #bitcoin-workshops chat on the Freenode IRC network
>>    http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=bitcoin-workshops
>>
>>
>> Call for Proposals/Papers/Presentations
>>
>> If you have any research relevant to issues surrounding Bitcoin
>> scalability, your proposal for a presentation at the Montreal workshop
>> would be most welcome.  Please see scalingbitcoin.org for submission
>> details.
>>
>> Pindar Wong
>>
>> Chair, Montreal Workshop Planning Committee
>>
>> Chairman, VeriFi (Hong Kong) Ltd.
>>
>> [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Improvement_Proposals
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> bitcoin-dev mailing list
>> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
>> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>>
>>
>
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