Hello! Namecoin is seriously considering applying to Google Summer of Code as a mentor organization. One of our suggested project ideas is the following: “Improve usability of registering a name anonymously by automating a purchase of namecoins using an anonymous currency like Monero or Zcash as part of the name registration process. This reduces the risk of private data leaking while purchasing namecoins (e.g. banking details at an exchange, or Bitcoin blockchain analysis data). Integrating with a decentralized exchange such as Bisq might be a useful way to do this (this might also make it easier to register Namecoin names with national currencies). Future advances in blockchain technology such as atomic cross-chain trades might be applicable, so try to make sure that your code could be reused with as few changes as possible for such use cases once they’re ready.”
Would any Bisq developers possibly be interested in helping mentor such a GSoC project if a student is interested in pursuing it?
I talked with Jeremy in Leipzig and love his initiative!
We will try to support as much as possible. I have no idea how what and how much it will require to mentor a student. If it is not a fixed time commitment I think we should be able to support it.
Yes, it was great to meet you and Chris in Leipzig!
So, regarding time commitment, there are two possible tiers. The simpler one is that Namecoin takes responsibility for providing the official mentor (that mentor from Namecoin would put in about 4-5 hours per week, and would get paid $500 USD by Google at the end of the summer), and Bisq developers would simply answer questions when the student runs into something that the Namecoin devs aren’t able to answer, as they would with any other potential contributor. The other possibility would be that both Namecoin and Bisq would supply an official mentor; the 4-5 hours per week would be split between Namecoin and Bisq, and the Namecoin mentor and the Bisq mentor would each get paid $250 USD by Google at the end of the summer.
Based on our conversations in Leipzig, I’m under the impression that you guys are sufficiently busy at the moment that the first of the two options is probably a better fit – is that an accurate assessment?
EDIT: I should note that all of this is only relevant if Google approves Namecoin’s application to be a GSoC mentor organization. The mentor organization selections will be announced on Feb 12. We’re just trying to organize potential mentors as early as possible since, if we’re selected on Feb 12, we’ll probably be getting students asking us about projects almost immediately and we want to be prepared for that.