Obyte Order Provider Candidacy

I am happy to announce that I’m a candidate to be one of the Obyte Order Providers and will be included in the 7th order provider poll in its steps to be further decentralized. I recorded an interview with the team which will be available on the Obyte Medium blog, but I have answered some of the questions as well here for easier reference and for those who prefer reading over watching.

Where are you from? What do you do for a living?

I am from the Philippines, though I’ve left the country a long time ago and am now living in my 8th country — Switzerland. After moving around quite a lot, sometimes against my own will and desires, on top of numerous immigration problems enough to fill out a presentation that’s almost an hour long, I’m hoping to be stable here in Zug, right in the heart of Crypto Valley.

I do quite a lot of things for a living that it’s really hard to put a name to what I do, other than perhaps occasionally “too much” or “fueling the caffeine industry”. But in general I do a range of things from technical and business solutions architecture and innovation consulting and advisory with companies like Consortio Group and Soramitsu, to running a creative design agency called BitStory together with my business partner. I also co-founded and STOKR, a live STO platform based in Luxembourg, where I am currently an advisor. A lot of the projects I take on are around the open source space, including some things with the Open Source Initiative itself where I am an Advocate Circle member, as well as around individual liberties. Around these two, I also have spoken frequently at various events around the world since 2017. More about what I do and what I’ve done can be found on my LinkedIn profile.

How long have you been involved in the crypto space?

I arrived in the crypto space in 2013 and started becoming involved in some community projects like moderating /r/altcoin and some IRC channels. I took a hiatus from around the middle of 2014 to the middle of 2016 though to deal with some life issues. However, when I came back I spent all working hours and more around crypto. Not much has changed since then, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So, how and when did you first find out about Obyte?

I was around the Nxt and Ardor space back then, (same community) and there was some chatter about this guy named Tony possibly being the then-anonymous founder of Nxt, BCNext, due to the references to 1984 by George Orwell in the white paper. A lot of the early community members around Obyte, which was Byteball back then, joined because of that. Actually, it was because of my experience with the Nxt Foundation, which I became a Board Member of shortly after coming back into crypto, that I was invited to be a Community Fund Trustee, which I still am today, though it hasn’t been used much due to funds coming directly from the team instead of from donations. I stuck around Obyte though even after it was proven that Tony was not BCNext as the whole approach of a directed acyclic graph (DAG) was quite interesting in this blockchain-heavy DLT space.

What do you like most about Obyte?

In addition to the DAG, I like the features that are being developed around Obyte that make it easier for further things to be developed by businesses and organizations, as well as people creating things simply for fun. Having human-readable smart contracts is also a great way to remove the barriers associated with auditing these things as not everyone has the knowledge to be able to do so or have the resources or contacts to find someone who does to do it for them. I also quite like how Tony approaches the project where his goal is to grow Obyte to the point that it no longer needs him, something that many projects that claim to aim for decentralization could never even imagine uttering.

What are your thoughts about the Order Provider system?

I like that even though we are having these polls for inclusion into a notification on the wallet for the option to be added and replace one of Tony’s nodes, remaining as an Order Provider is fairly decentralized as users can still remove and replace any of us or even all of us if they so wish. Some other systems that have validators instead of Order Providers have them locked in not by the community (with the exception of creating a chain split) but rather by a centralized entity. As an Order Provider, I have no contract with Tony nor the Obyte Foundation, but rather an open one with the community, which can kick me out at any time should I start operating dishonestly.

Thank you for your consideration. My witness address is FL3LIHRXYE6PS7AADJLDOYZKDO2UVVNS