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# What We Could Do
###### tags: `article / in process`

[Need to decide on the goal here: to sell people on investing in new projects (which is a hard lift) or to sell people on paying us for services related to existing project (which is easier, but a big change). Need to make that decision before deciding how to finalize this text.]

Blockchain Commons has produced numerous tutorials, libraries, and applications. We've outlined architectures, produced specifications, and helped shape the future of identity law. The central theme of our work is Responsible Key Management (RKM), which focuses on empowering individuals and organizations to attain greater digital freedoms through independent and resilient cryptographic key control. Our RKM methods are the result of extensive dialogue with our supporters and work with our clients.

Also See: [ [Our Current Projects](https://www.blockchaincommons.com/projects.html) ]

But, there's much more we could do. We'd be happy to work directly with you on a project of importance to your company. Some projects might help you by advancing the bitcoin ecosystem, while others might directly adapt our work for your usage. Please [let us know](mailto:team@blockchaincommons.com) what you're interested in seeing us work on!

## Small Projects ($10-20k to get started)

**Information Alternatives.** Open access to information is important for the blockchain ecosystem. Specifically, we believe that the decentralized web should have decentralized information systems. That's why we're working on a demonstration Esplora deployment, to offer an alternative to [blockstream.info](https://blockstream.info/). We can also white label Esplora instances for individual companies and offer ongoing maintenance.

**Specification Support.** Working with the community to create new specifications for decentralized system has been a prime focus at Blockchain Commons because data that is well structured and secure is the foundation of secure systems. We have created our own specification for Universal Resources, which is already gaining wide-spread adoption due to its innovative support for animated QRs. We can provide individual companies with support for not just UR, but also for other specifications such as JSON-LD.

**Spotbit.** The [SpotBit server](https://www.spotbit.info/spotbit/) is a Blockchain Commons tool for Bitcoin price discovery, which is open source and independent of exchanges and other commercial platforms. The tool offers high trust with its unbiased and accurate price data. Companies and individuals can white-label this tool, and we can offer ongoing maintenance and customization it. If you have interest in using Spotbit, you can also support us to improve its reliability and to standardize its installation on AWS and other services. A slightly bigger project would allow us to expand its pricing services to fee-rates by using historic information predicatively.

**Tor-gapped Timestamps.** One of our experiments with [Torgap](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/torgap) architecture supports the timestamping Verifiable Credentials over Tor. This would allow individual companies to offer trustworthy self-sovereign credentials to their customers. Support of this project would speed up its deployment.

**White Labels.** Generally, we can work with companies to produce white labels for any of Blockchain Commons' products. This would allow companies to offer Responsible Key Management techniques to their clients, without accruing liability themselves, as Blockchain Commons' techniques are self-sovereign.

## Medium Projects ($50k to get started)

**Learning More Bitcoin.** Our very popular [Learning Bitcoin from the Command Line course](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/Learning-Bitcoin-from-the-Command-Line) teaches the fundamentals of Bitcoin development. It has recently been revamped in a v2.0, but we've begun [making plans for v3.0](e). Individual companies could work with us to request coaching, training, or technical support related to the course, or to include specific topics of interest to them in the 3.0 revision.

**SmarterCustody.** Blockchain Commons' #SmartCustody is a book that informs and educates the reader to use "advanced cryptographic tools to improve the care, maintenance, control, and protection of digital assets." It's the heart of Blockchain Commons' Responsible Key Management. 
Digital asset owners and fiduciaries that self custody can benefit from the advice, modelling and recognition of adversaries provided. It can be considered a 'do it yourself' guide; however we can assist you with implementation and guidance with our **Responsible Key Management** method. Specifically, the service we've built on top of the #SmartCustody book consists of:

1. Intake and quick scan, architecture plus engineering. Result: Risk modelling in sheets. E.g. multi-criteria analysis.
2. ==Tailoring the RKM building blocks and guided decision making. Result: Responsible key management implemented by our customers. Dependent of the culture of the client organization (self-paced vs. compliant), urgency and priority, BCC creates all intermediate results.==
3. Education plan and execution. Intermediate results are at the center of these trainings. Result: Grades achieved by your personnel and customers.
4. Adversary exercises, role plays and stress tests. Result: Certification .

We would also like to produce better best practices and software-review standards for the entire blockchain industry. This is the reason why we offer tools, guides and methodologies to customers open source.

**Cryptographic Software Practices.** For IT-companies only. As part of our advance of software-review standards, we create methods for certifying code, binaries, and individuals as well as assist you in formulating your offerings of proof of best practices to your users.

**Trust-Minimized Identifiers.** Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) are advancing rapidly in commercial settings, but less attention is being paid to the trust-minimized and self-sovereign scenarios. If you are in the business of supporting vulnerable populations these technologies can help advance your mission. We can assist with best in class identifiers, implementations and documentation.

## Large Projects ($500k to get started)

Large-scale donations can enable us to begin major initiatives that can change the face of the blockchain industry.

**Patent Management.** Blockchain Commons is a member of [COPA](https://open-patent.org/about-copa/), the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance. We're extending our work with lawyers and other parties such as the EFF. As such we are pledged to pool our crypto-patents and only use them defensively. If you wish to contibute your patents, or co-develop new patents with our support, we can help you with this goal.

**Cryptographically Supported Authorization.** Why should we fully support it with cryptographic features*? Because you need to innovate your access management.

\*Such as object capabilities, watch-towers, non-fungible tokens, pre-signed transactions, smart signature scripts, scriptless scripts, adaptor signatures, and ZK-proofs.

**Evaluating Infrastructure Weaknesses.** Most broadly, we would like to examine the weak points in Your shared technical infrastructure: to see what areas are poorly supported and then to built up support for them by creating technology or by helping you to raise funds to support them.

_For more information on supporting these programs, please contact us directly at [team@blockchaincommons.com](mailto:team@blockchaincommons.com)._

==PREVIOUS DRAFT ==

# What We Could Do
###### tags: `article / in process`

Blockchain Commons has produced numerous tutorials, libraries, and applications. We've outlined architectures, produced specifications, and helped shape the future of identity law. This work will all continue via our normal patronage support & industry connections.

However, we also have larger aspirations: new projects that we would like to work on to help advance blockchain and identity technology, but which we currently don't have the resources for.

Following are some of the advances that you could enable with either a small, medium, or large donation to Blockchain Commons. These donations could be made through [BTCPay](https://btcpay.blockchaincommons.com/), via [GitHub Sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/BlockchainCommons), or by contacting us directly at [team@blockchaincommons.com](mailto:team@blockchaincommons.com).

Please let us know what you're interested in seeing us work on!

Also See: [ [Our Current Projects](https://www.blockchaincommons.com/projects.html) ]

## Small Projects ($10-20k to get started)

Small-scale donations could help us to accelerate our work, either pulling projects from our backlog or speeding up work on extant designs.

**Info Alternatives.** We are currently working on creating an Esplora site as an alternative to [blockstream.info](https://blockstream.info/). We would like to accelerate this work on decentralizing information, and can also work with companies to create their own branded versions.
> [name=@ChristopherA] We also can standup more decentralized or distributed infrastructure, including Tor exit nodes, Signal proxies, etc, along with install support tools & documentation available for all as open source. Some of these offer branding possibilities for partners. Note, for us to host these ourselves also requires long-term Patron support, not a one-time fee, as they require ongoing maintenance.

**JSON-LD.** JSON-LD is currently focused on JavaScript. We would like to produce libraries for C++, Rust, or other languages of note.
> [name=@ChristopherA] This may be better described along the lines of standards support. For instance, there is a call right now for a second DID CBOR implementation that IPFS folk need, otherwise the feature may be pulled from the standard. Other standards may need support of either code or evangelization.

**Spotbit.** Our [SpotBit server](https://www.spotbit.info/spotbit/) already offers Bitcoin pricing services. We'd like to improve its reliability and standardize its installation on AWS and other services. A slightly bigger project would allow us to expand its pricing services to fee-rates by using historic information predicatively. 

**Tor-gapped Timestamps.** An expansion of our [Torgap](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/torgap) architecture would allow us to timestamp Verifiable Credentials over Tor.

**Web-based QR Scanners.** We'd like to create QR scanning microservices by enabling scanning from web pages using a variety of programming languages.
> [name=@ChristopherA] this is more of research and  enabling library then a microservice, that allows for combining airgap with torgap using URS for use by microservices.

**White Labels.** We can work with companies to produce white labels for any Blockchain Commons' products.
> [name=@ChristopherA] in particular, Gordian Cosigner might be of use to any custodial orginizations wanting to offer clients a collaborative key. LetheKit could be put onto another platform. 

**?**
> [name=@ChristopherA] Another area is cross-platform of both libraries and apps. We could move up in priority the Android version of our libaries, a Rust version of our code.

## Medium Projects ($50k to get started)

Medium-scale donations can support major new projects or major revisions of existing ones.

**Learning More Bitcoin.** Our very popular [Learning Bitcoin from the Command Line course](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/Learning-Bitcoin-from-the-Command-Line) has recently been revamped in a v2.0, but we've begun [making plans for v3.0](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/Learning-Bitcoin-from-the-Command-Line/blob/master/TODO-30.md). We envision it to include new technologies like Minisig and Schnorr as well as support for new libraries and new command-line tools (including those produced by Blockchain Commons, such as the CLI [keytool](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/bc-keytool-cli) and [seedtool](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/bc-seedtool-cli)).

**#SmarterCustody.** We already have [plans](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/SmartCustodyBook/blob/master/TODO.md) to revamp our [#SmartCustody book](https://bit.ly/SmartCustodyBookV101) with new hardware and multi-sigs (though that [requires funding too](https://smartcustody.btcpay.blockchaincommons.com/)). Additional funding would allow us to talk about related topics such as securing computers, participating in a secure software ecosystem, and strengthening the entire community. We would also like to produce better best practices and software-review standards for the entire blockchain industry.

**Cryptographic Software Practices.** As part of our advance of software-review standards, we'd like to specifically incorporate and expand lessons learned in the crypto industry for software development. This starts with known practices like code signing, but expands into code attributation and verifiable claims. Ultimately, we'd like to be able to create methods for certifying code, binaries, and individuals as well as offering proof of best practices.

**Trust-Minimized Identifiers.** Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) are advancing rapidly in commercial settings, but less attention is being paid to the trust-minimized and self-sovereign scenarios that were the foundation of the DID movement when it was initially focused on supporting vulnerable populations. We'd like to return to these topics. This could include expansion of our work on BTCR, the creation of identifiers based on other cryptocurrencies such as Zcash or Monero, or integration with other protective protocols such as Kademlia and CONIKS. These could result in new DID methods or alternatively new sorts of identifiers that support DIDs' core principles.

**Herd Privacy Evangelization.** With herd privacy, the pseudonymity of individuals can multiply, creating true privacy at a global level. We would like to better specify this methodology, to educate about its usage, and to evaluate examples of it, as they become available.

**Authorization/Authentication Separation.** Work is needed to create new architectures that separate authentication systems (which verify who someone is) from authorization systems (which verify what they can do). Object capabilities, crypto capabilities, and zCaps can all be used to advance this work. The Lightning Network's LSAT protocol could also advance this space, but requires coordination with Lightning companies.

**Shards Support.** We've already done some initial work with Shamir's Secret Sharing, including exposing [problems with SLIP-39](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/bc-lethekit/issues/38) and releasing our own [shamir](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/bc-shamir) and [SSKR](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/bc-sskr) implementations. We would like to expand our work on Shamir's Secret Sharing and sskr including work on the Verifiable Secret Sharing (VSS) scheme.
> [name=@ChristopherA] Maybe shards shards support is a <$50K item. More valuable is putting together a strategy for operational security that leverages both reconstruction and recovery to minimize risk and maximize resilience. That is worth $50 to $100K to lots of orgs.

## Large Projects ($500k to get started)

Large-scale donations can enable us to begin major initiatives that can change the face of the blockchain industry.

**Patent Management.** Blockchain Commons is a member of [COPA](https://open-patent.org/about-copa/), the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance. As such we are pledged to pool our crypto-patents and only use them defensively. Because of this pledge and our position in the industry, we have two different companies considering donating their patents to us. This will allow us to add the patents to the COPA pool. However, a larger investment would allow us to seek out other patents and to work with lawyers and other parties such as the EFF to create a powerful patent defense force for the crypto industry.

**Cryptographically Supported Authorization.** The next step in authorization, following its separation from authentication, is to fully support it with cryptographic features such as object capabilities, watch-towers, non-fungible tokens, pre-signed transactions, smart signature scripts, scriptless scripts, adaptor signatures, and ZK-proofs.

**Evaluating Infrastructure Weaknesses.** Most broadly, we would like to examine the weak points in our shared technical infrastructure: to see what areas are poorly supported and then to built up support for them by creating technology or by raising funds to support them. This could include standards evangelization (especially BIP evangelization), which is a known weakness, and much more.

_For more information on supporting these programs, please contact us directly at [team@blockchaincommons.com](mailto:team@blockchaincommons.com)._