I am Dr. Philip N. Brown, professor of computer science at the University of Colorado and lead on the
201907-uccs-research-project worker which aims to fund research on BitAssets and create simulation models to help improve price pegging and collateralization for BitAssets.
Current Project Status and activitiesBefore any funds came to the worker proposal, I wrote a paper to send to the Decentralized 2019 conference; the paper has already been made available to the BitShares community here:
http://cs.uccs.edu/~pbrown2/papers/Decentralized_Preprint.pdf.
Work is progressing well. The PhD student who is attached to the project has been learning about financial modeling and this week we'll start developing our BitAsset simulator. The simulator will be a testbed which we will use to look at the effects of different choices of chain parameters, and as time goes on we will expand it to look at more advanced stabilization techniques also.
If the project receives sufficient funding (approximately $40k, to ensure the researcher/student is fully funded for at least one year), we will make sure that the simulation code is available for the BitShares community to use to test various aspects of pegging behavior on their own.
Accounting InformationThis worker proposal is a BitShares Blockchain Foundation escrow worker, which means that any community member is free to examine the accounting information at any time:
https://www.bitshares.foundation/workers/2019-07-uccs-research-projectWe have not yet requested a payment from the foundation, since so far only $14,000 has been allocated and it would be considerably better for us to receive a larger amount as our first disbursement.
Project costsThe
proposal originally requested $150,000 to fully fund a 2-year project. Approximately half of that money was slated to be used to fund the student's efforts; this means the original proposal asked for about $80,000 to pay for a full-time PhD student/researcher to work on the project for 2 years. The bulk of the remainder of the funds were to be used to pay me to devote some of my summers to the project full-time.
I will continue to stress that $150,000 would set this up as a very successful project, but I also understand that since the BTS price has decreased so much in the past months, the community is now hesitant to part with this much money all at once.
In light of this, I want the cn-vote community to know that this project will give the community results even if it is only funded at a level of $40,000. Even this extremely low level of funding would ensure that the project's student would be fully funded and completely committed to the project for a full year.
Thus, I am asking the cn-vote community to consider voting the research worker back in until at least $40,000 have been raised. At current prices, this should take about 3 weeks, and it would be a good balance between funding the project and reducing BTS inflation. $40,000 would allow us to make significant progress (build a complete simulator for the community to use for experiments, and then analyze the simulation results deeply and draw some conclusions about how to set the chain parameters optimally), and then if the BTS price increases in the future we can introduce a new worker to continue the work.
Some QuestionsQ1. If $40,000 is enough for the project to generate value, why does the original proposal ask for $150,000?
A: At universities, students do most of the research work; at my university, a full-time student costs at least $40,000 per year. The extra money was going to be used to "buy my time" from the University so that I could devote large blocks of my time to the project as well. So: $40,000 buys the project a student for a year; $150,000 buys the project a student for 2 years plus a professor (me) full-time for a total of four months. If project costs are cut, I will always sacrifice my time first and keep the student working. However, of course the more effort that is devoted to the project, the more successful it will be.
Q2. Why does this worker ask for all the money at the start of the project?
A: I wish there were a better way to do this, but unfortunately the way research funding works at universities is that the money must be committed at the start of the project. Part of the reason for this is to make sure that the student is confident in their ability to continue working throughout the project. However, the BitShares community needs to understand that my reputation as a professor is at stake if I mis-manage the money: a very important part of my career is that when I tell people I'm going to be able to get research done, I absolutely need to deliver on my promise.
Q3. Why is this worker important for the BitShares community?
A: A (relatively) short answer is this: this worker brings 3 core benefits to the BitShares community.
First, we will provide specific recommendations to the community about how chain parameters such as MCR and MSSR should be chosen, along with detailed simulation results and mathematical analysis to support our recommendations. In turn, when the BitShares community advertises their product, they will be in a very strong position to say "we've had this looked at, and here are all the reasons why we do things the way we do them." This should make BitShares a stronger competitor.
Second, we will publish and present our findings at well-respected academic conferences (and tell everybody that BitShares sponsored us), which will directly increase the global awareness of the BitShares system.
Third, by funding high-level research, BitShares will help to define what kinds of problems are "interesting" and worth studying; when other researchers see money going to a particular topic, it increases their interest in that topic. Of course this benefit is the least tangible, but it really is an important piece of funding university research that many people forget about.
As always, please direct your questions to me and I will do my best to answer them.
Topic: Announcement of cn-vote Union: Re-evaluation of our support of Worker Proposals (Read 28515 times)
