to Joseph, Andrew, Jeremy, Vanessa, Matt, Shahan, peter.robinson, daniel.heyman, jwolpert (all ConsenSys)

I don’t know where the Executive Director search for the EEA has got up to, but I feel very, very strongly that Brian Behlendorf should fill that role, on a part-time basis, while also continuing as ED at Hyperledger.

I have a grand convergence plan, which has come together in my mind over those last few weeks of my time at ConsenSys and continued to take clearer and clearer shape in my mind through numerous discussions with key parties while I was at DEVCON3 in Cancun (including meetings I facilitated between Brian, Sanjay (Intel), Jan (Monax), Marley and York (Microsoft), and Conor (blk.io).

In brief, the “Bob plan” is as follows:

– Hyperledger works to become a “gateway drug” (Brian’s words) for the real deal which is Ethereum. That has already started with Seth (Sawtooth+Burrow) and will continue with Fabric+Burrow (EVM inside Docker, V’s first suggestion 18 months ago) and the most fascinating of all will be Constellation+Burrow (leading to an Apache 2.0 “Quorum” within Hyperledger. I don’t know if this beast will be production ready, but it is an awesome migration path option for those stuck inside Hyperledger world. These “escape routes” are being driven by Intel, Monax, JPM and whoever else wants to be in a coalition of the willing.

– We get Microsoft to join Hyperledger and help support these efforts.

– We get IBM to join EEA and start building bridges from Fabric to Ethereum. Like they should have done 18 months ago.

– In parallel we are using EEA as the funding vehicle for building “New Client” which gets us to the “Linux kernel for blockchain” which we have always wanted, spanning all public/private/consortium use-cases, for whatever consensus, whatever privacy, whatever permissioning. Permissively licensed, modular, high code quality, mainstream language, maybe microservices architecture, not over-associated with any single company. The codebase we all want. PegaSys likely primary drivers for this work, but also BlockApps, Nuco, Monax, Cryptape, Brainbot if they want to be part of it.

– On standards, I think we move the EIP process into IETF flow (https://www.ietf.org/tao.html) and actually seriously engage with IETF and W3C. If we are serious about Web 3.0 then we need to be engaged with them. Then this community process moves away from EF and EEA entirely and literally into the IETF or W3C, resolving all perceived conflict of interest from the EF. Maybe some ISO chat, but unlikely to ever be very useful.

– I’m advising Vitalik on the reboot of the EF as well. My recommendation to V being to drop all development activity on geth, Mist, etc. and for that work to move into Ethlab, Ethersphere, DFINITY, etc. EF can give those groups grants or something as a bridge-pattern. EF to focus on Research, Community, Grants, Bounty Programs, Education, Documentation. All the stuff which is currently painful and conflict producing BEGONE!

Anyway, my ask here is please let’s not appoint anybody other than Brian to that EEA ED role unless it has been given serious consideration, because it could derail this glorious convergence opportunity.

After Brian has been appointed as ED for EEA, I think we then migrate the EEA into the Linux Foundation, and stop inventing our own stupid processes and workflows and tooling. Just pretty much follow the existing Linux Foundation patterns, which have been battle-proven over hundreds of collaboration projects. Focus on shared open source code, not standards (major pivot, I know). And then we merge Hyperledger and EEA. Fabric, Sawtooth, Burrow, Quorum, geth — all become deprecated codebases, though they may hang around for years.

We are all sitting on top of a “Linux kernel for blockchain”, and that is Ethereum.

Division of Powers in the new Ethereum Republic?

– IETF/W3C (Standards)

– Ethereum Foundation (Research and Community)

– Linux Foundation (Primary Kernel implementation)

And you can have alternative implementations of these standards (Parity, CITA, IOHK) if people want to compete with “New Client”. The EIPs discussion moves to a grown-up body, and Parity can have a voice at the table there, with no EF-conflict anymore.

And you can have “plugins” to that “New Client” where vendors provide alternative consensus or other features (AMIS, Bloq, Tendermint, DFINITY, RChain, Bigchain DB, ZCash) under the banner of the Linux Foundation.

And you get middleware on top (ConsenSys, blk.io, BlockApps, Nuco, Brainbot, Cryptape, Microsoft, Nethereum, Truffle).

This dream actually happens. We get Ethereum Everywhere:

https://bobsummerwill.com/2016/07/12/ethereum-everywhere/

Just imagine the impact this could have on the world!

I think we can get all this done by DEVCON4 and have a glorious, glorious keynote detailing the Nirvana we have reached on all fronts — EF, EEA, Hyperledger, Standards.

John — With you gone from IBM, who is the “new you”? I think the main resistance to this plan is likely to come from IBM, given the sunk cost on Fabric, especially from a PR perspective. Jerry’s support for this plan is going to be absolutely key, and I hope that you can be the bridge to Jerry which makes this happen!

I will be back in the EEA very soon (and in Hyperledger for the first time too), having applied for membership in both for Sweetbridge. We will actively be building on Ethereum, Quorum, Fabric, Corda and on inter-chain stuff. I need that for my job now — talk about a primary motivation 🙂