Interview — Acetmesis — Community Leader of Stratis
Tags: Crypto, Cryptocurrency, Stratis, Bitcoin, Interview

Hey Acetmesis, could you please introduce yourself?

I go as Acetmesis in and around the crypto space, a mashup of my initials (ACE) and tmesis, which is a linguistic construct whereby you stick a word inside another, compounded, word, e.g. crypto-bloody-currency. Don’t ask me why I chose this name: I don’t have a good answer to that question.

Besides my passion for the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, I have worked with a small film production company making low-budget horror movies and spend all my spare time on another passion of mine, woodworking.

How did you first learn about Bitcoin and the crypto space?

I don’t remember the exact first time heard about Bitcoin, but it was quite some time ago. I do remember the first proper conversation I had about it: with my dad after he had watched a Max Keiser bit on Bitcoin in 2012/13. He asked my opinion and I’m sure I had nothing valuable to say at the time.

My first real foray into the Bitcoin world was while I was at university, studying Physics and Philosophy. Bitcoin came up in one of the Phil tutorials, not as part of the curriculum, just in a general discussion about money. This was 2014. I fell for crypto pretty hard after that; not quite a victim of the FOMO of 2013, but certainly a victim of its fallout in the year that followed.

I invested some money, subsequently lost all of it and retired from the crypto game for a year, picking it back up again at the tail end of 2015. This time, I sat down and made the effort to gain a better understanding of the technology and the value proposition: the interplay between the mechanics of a cryptocurrency and the markets it trades in. I haven’t looked back since.

Which aspects of Bitcoin and the crypto space made you choose to explore it more?

The first reason I was driven to learn more is probably shared by most cryptocurrency investors: money. I believe that the “killer app” for Bitcoin and the world of cryptocurrencies was (and possibly still is) speculation. This won’t be true forever. However, it was certainly true back then. People were making money and I wanted in on the action.

Volatility (hence, speculation) are an excellent way of bootstrapping an asset. Cryptocurrencies derive efficacy from participation. What better way to get people participating than to give them the idea that they might make some money?

This interest borne of greed developed into a passion, nurtured not by the promise of money, but by a deeper understanding of the technology. I’m very much the autodidact, so my first port of call was the Bitcoin Core repository (https://github.com/bitcoin), reading through the docs, opening code at random and trying to work out how it all fitted together using the comments.

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t go anywhere using this method. So, not to be discouraged, I moved to the Princeton Bitcoin Book (https://lopp.net/pdf/princeton_bitcoin_book.pdf). It looked pretty daunting at first but it’s a really accessible primer on cryptocurrencies. I came away from it feeling like I could tackle the cryptocurrency space with a little more direction than I had first entered it with.

How did you learn about Stratis?

Pretty unpoetically, I’m afraid: on one of the various “Upcoming ICOs” websites. I’d browse them from time to time looking for promising new projects. The ICO craze was kicking in again and I am not immune to FOMO. I hopped onto the Bitcointalk topic and kept an eye on what was going on.

Chris and Krushang talked the talk (and, of course, have since been walking the walk). At the time, I was very into the exciting new idea of sidechains (exciting and new to me, anyway) and I felt that Stratis’ enterprise-facing concept had really good prospects, even in those early days. The more time I spent within the burgeoning community, the more confident I was in the project.

By the end of the ICO I had convinced my Dad and a friend of mine to participate as well. The first and only time I’ve gone out of my way to get people to invest in something.

What made you decide to join the Stratis Community?

I am an unapologetic fan of Bitcoin. Stratis’ relationship with its big brother kept me coming back for more, in the early days. What made me stay long term was the people who made up the community. Within the Stratis community, I have met some of the smartest, funniest, kindest and most generous (in spirit, time and more tangible terms) people I’ve ever had the fortune to know in my life.

At some point, I realised that I was spending more time with these people online than I did with the people in my day-to-day life. Having great conversations, learning so much from them or just generally talking rubbish. I am happy to count members of this community amongst the best friends I have.

The Stratis community is supportive, patient and passionate. The community’s culture is a joy to me and it is made healthy by each and every person who donates their time, their energy and their positivity.

Could you tell us a little bit more about your Stratis journey so far and what it is that you do and have done in the past?

My first goal was to learn. Learn about Stratis, suss out the architecture of the platform and understand the value proposition of Strat. The Stratis community is well populated with individuals who know their stuff. Fortunately for me, they are happy to give their time to people who want to learn. Bit by bit, the Stratis picture was painted for me. There’s still so much I don’t understand. Learning is the fun bit anyway.

I think that you can’t help but help other people to learn when you are learning yourself. I found that I was writing longer and longer posts about Stratis, just as a way of getting my own ideas or my own new understandings down. Fortunately, rather than be annoyed by my piecing things together publicly, people would join in, or even thank me for helping them to understand.

My own journey to understand these things became useful to other people. I realised that this was how I could start to give back to the community which had given me so much: write content to help people gain a better understanding of Stratis and be active on the various forums to talk one on one with people — answer their questions when I could or point them to the someone who could when I couldn’t and give them the resources they needed.

What would you consider as the greatest joys in running and being part of the Stratis Community?

Definitely the personal interactions with Stratis community members. What can I say, I’m a softie. I love getting to know the people who spend time in the community. So many different backgrounds, so many different walks of life. Each and every one has a story to tell and I am genuinely interested to hear it.

On a level with this is when someone says thank you for something I’ve done. Be it help them with some basic support, an article or some other piece of content. I couldn’t be happier to give my time to Stratis in whatever way I can. Having someone say thank you for doing so is a wonderful feeling. I’m only human, after all.

What’s the moment that made you most proud so far at being one of the community leaders of Stratis?

Tough question. Once upon a time I would have said the Stratis FAQ (https://stratisfaq.com/). However, it is now out of date. I hope to revamp it and give it a new lease of life. I will do so in such a way that it can accept contributions from anyone within the community. This way, I hope it can become a valuable resource once again.

I get a big sense of pride when I see the Stratis community talked of with praise elsewhere in the cryptocurrency space. I’ve seen it used as an example of a solid crypto community. I’ve seen people say things like “you should check out the Stratis Discord/Slack/Telegram, that’s how a community should be set up”. That makes me feel pride, not for myself, but for the community.

In your own words how would you describe Stratis?

Distributed/Decentralised/Peer-to-Peer Network Lego. Stratis is the underlying cryptocurrency to a suite of services that allow a user to create applications which require the participation of mutually untrusting parties. It is a familiar, flexible and comprehensive blockchain development kit. Familiar given its positioning within the Microsoft tech stack (C#/.NET), flexible given the modular nature of the platform (plug in only those components such as you see fit for your application) and comprehensive given its modular nature: new innovations can be incorporated readily.

In your own words how would you describe the Stratis Community?

Stratis.

Stratis is not the company, it is not even the code: it is the network of computers participating in the cryptocurrency. Stratis is every person who holds Strat, sends Strat, trades Strat, runs nodes etc. There is no Stratis without the Stratis community.

Perhaps it’s a little maladroit to give “Stratis” as an answer to this question. Nonetheless, I believe that the above point is very important. A cryptocurrency neglects its community at its peril. Cryptos live and die by the health of their community.

Do you see any room for improvements in Bitcoin and crypto?

Yes and yes. I believe that there is huge room for improvement for bitcoin, on all fronts: at the protocol level, scalability (not of throughput or latency or any of that rubbish, but of the future accessibility to operating your own fully validating node — i.e. keeping the blockchain size and initial download time to minimum), non-first layer technologies, user experience, adoption, social scalability and so the list continues. Development on all of these fronts is progressing at a huge speed and the improvements on Bitcoin are coming thick and fast.

As for crypto more generally, I think that it is harder to pinpoint specific areas for improvement, yet I am loathe to simply say “everything”. Bitcoin is the best truly peer-to-peer shot we have at hard money. Every altcoin chooses to accept some level of compromise, hopefully in the name of some improvement. For example, PoS accepts a compromise in true peer-to-peer consensus compared with PoW. However, the trade off is deemed worthwhile for cryptocurrencies which are geared more towards the development of decentralised applications (such as Stratis, with Ethereum also jumping on the bandwagon once they achieve the switch to PoS). I think that the crypto space needs to determine which compromises work best. This will happen naturally. Survival of the fittest. The process favours those which are best equipped to adapt and Stratis is very well equipped to adapt…

Do you see any room for improvements for Stratis?

Yes, definitely. It would be a worry if I couldn’t see room for improvement. Engaging a broader community of developers is the key area, in my mind. People talk about the network effect like some kind of crypto panacea. Determining its value for cryptocurrencies is hard enough, but identifying how best to achieve it is even harder. For me, the next step is broadening the number of developers working on top of the platform. I don’t know off hand how many teams are working with the code, 10? 12? More? Whatever the number is, it can can always be bigger.

There’s nothing worse than someone who points out areas in need of improvement but who offers up no thoughts on how to bring it about. So, off the top of my head, I would suggest Stratis host hackathons, continue to provide excellent documentation (delving now into lower-level detail) and entertain the possibility of incubator funds. There will be other ways of cultivating a developer community and we need to find the best ones.

Do you see any room for improvements for the Stratis Community?

The community is already perfect! Perhaps the only improvement would be to have more people and form an even bigger community.

I do think that the community can be better served and better utilised. It is full of smart and talented people. There are writers, designers, traders, construction workers, students, producers, musicians, fishermen, teachers — you name it. We, as a community, need to find more ways of unlocking the potential that is there.

I think that we need to take the ideas which are put forward by the community and follow them up. If someone suggests we go onto Twitter and start conversations about Stratis? Don’t wait for someone else to do it, do it yourself, if you have the time. Think we need some graphics to help explain some aspect of the platform? See if someone in the community is willing to work with you to get your ideas out there.

A lot of people would call you crazy for helping out Stratis voluntarily for such a long and consequent time, what makes you do this anyways?

I receive more in value from my time and energy given to helping Stratis than is incurred as a cost of giving time and energy. I really enjoy helping out where I can. I believe that Stratis has the potential to be at the top of this game. I want Stratis to achieve the greatest success that it can and I will give what I can to help make this happen. I see no reason for this to change and I will continue to spend as much of my time within the community as I can.

What is the thing that drives and motivates you to voluntarily help out Stratis every single day?

The individuals who make up the Stratis team and the individuals who make up the Stratis community. I do also enjoy writing and communicating ideas, but it is the people who are involved which keep me going. I don’t need any more motivation than that.

What’s your future vision for Stratis, what is the thing you hope to achieve in the long-term for Stratis and what is your role to play in all of this?

I envision Stratis as first being a blockchain playground, with multiple sidechains forming a broad ecosystem for developers to play around in. Then I believe it will solidify into a number of established applications built in fewer, best-established sidechains, with new applications being built to be a part of the larger ecosystem. The Stratis mainchain itself will become a foundation for the sidechains, used only for larger, high value transactions: the central nervous system of the Stratis ecosystem.

I am happy to do whatever I can to help bring this vision to a reality. I don’t see myself changing up where I fit in all that much. I don’t have any ambitions besides continue to help people understand and continue to grow my own understanding in turn.

When will Stratis have succeeded in your opinion?

The easy answer of course is “never”. The landscape will continue to change and there will never be a static definition of success. For me, personally, there are steps in the staircase to success which Stratis can take, which I will view as going in the right direction. As I mentioned above, building a developer community is one of those steps. A major milestone would be when the number of contributions by outside developers to the Stratis codebase outnumbers the number of contributions by the internal Stratis team.

And I would like to end with giving an opportunity to say anything you still want to say to the community or in general

There’s nothing I can say here that I wouldn’t be able to say in person to each and every individual, but: thank you for being such a great group of people to spend time with. Thank you for every conversation, every minute given to helping out myself and one another and every show of support for what Stratis is doing.

We’re just getting started.

Thanks a lot, Acetmesis for taking the time to answer all of the questions and sharing all of this information. Follow Acetmesis on Twitter here.

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