Pkr for ZCG (June 2022)

Hey everyone,

I’m Parker and am announcing my intent to run for ZCG. I’ve been interested in Zcash for about 5 years. I believe that it’s come a long way but has a much longer way to go to achieve a best-in-class private digital money ecosystem.

Personally, I got my start by observing my brother’s 2600-esque(capades?) by “phreaking” and having that land him a job straight out of high school. This encouraged me to go down my own path which led me to various private h4x0r chat rooms circa 1995 on AOL 2.5, including, but not limited to: “server”, “zerver”, “cerver”, “mm”. While my phone line was tied up and my parents yelling at me to get offline, I began learning Visual Basic to write simple progs like the ones I saw in the chatrooms I was in. At first just text faders and scrollers (for those nice Overhead accounts that were passed around and I was lucky to use before the owners called in and got a password reset). Naturally, I wanted to share my programs and also share some of my favorite progs that I was using at the time like AoHell, Gothic Nightmares, Pepsi, H2O tools, and others which I forget. I started using all the various free hosting providers (GoPlay, Tripod, Angelfire, Geocities) and eventually found NewsPro which parlayed me into the E/N (Everything/Nothing) scene where I would host mp3s, funny pictures, webcam galleries, prank calls, and “blog” with my friends. Naturally, I was a bit of a perfectionist on the design of the website, so I had a friend of mine share with me a copy of Adobe Photoshop 5.5 through AIM’s direct-connection feature (a simple workaround to allow transferring of large files with the caveat that your parents or siblings didn’t pick up the phone and drop your connection). I got pretty good at using it and started to sell pre-made and customized templates for gaming clans (specifically for Unreal Tournament but later on Counterstrike), which I then sold on webhostingtalk and digitalpoint forums.

Sadly, AIM began dying around this time (early 2000s), but because I was getting into building websites, I began to learn CSS, (semantic) HTML, Javascript, and PHP. My first user-generated content meme site, was a website called Hide Pink Shirt Guy where you could “rasterbate” the pink shirt guy, place it in a precarious location, and submit your photo. People were submitting from the second story of malls, in front of police stations, and even on tanks in Afghanistan. Having someone use a product you have built is a feeling like none other, and kept me thirsty for more. Following this project, I built a very NSFW but also popular (at the time) website with another person who I met on the Offtopic forums. At this time, I was going to school for my B.S. in computer science, but never stopped building websites. Upon graduation, I created a satirical “Hot or Not” type website called “Hipster or Homeless” which had the full URL mentioned in the movie “Drinking Buddies” and earned another funny footnote as one of PC mag’s top websites in 2011. The Hipster or Homeless website got me my first real job out of college since the guy who hired me, ran engineering at “Hot or Not”, which was where my idea was heavily inspired from. This was also around the time that I had an idea to build a life hacks type website. I began collecting tips I found and dumped them into a subreddit I made called /r/lifeprotips. I didn’t finish the tip website until about 3-4 years later, as I was pre-occupied with living and working in San Francisco, however, the subreddit started to grow on its own. When I was ready to launch the website, I opened up link-based submissions on the subreddit, with the condition that they could only be uploaded to the newly launched domain. Someone reported this almost immediately to an admin and I was subsequently removed from the community I fostered, moderated, bought gold and gifted to people, etc. On top of that, my account was shadow-banned. That kind of left a sour taste in my mouth with the state of the commercialized internet in that if you don’t build on your own platform, you are at the mercy of the centralized overlords.

I’ve worked professionally at a number of companies in the bay area (large and small) as both a front-end and full-stack engineer, although my preference is on the front-end. I like crafting good user experiences, and I’m always interested in new trends, and trying to find out what the next “thing” is. This is exactly why ZECPages.com and the innovative use of the shielded “memo” field is one of the most appealing things to me about Zcash. The fact that you can create a truly anonymous and decentralized platform, in which contributors can potentially earn something that has real value, is truly what I would believe the next evolution in “social media” is.

If you vote for me, I’ll do my best to bring my years of experience both personally and professionally into the mix to help bring builders over to Zcash and make it a place that people want to be. Inherently, I think ZSAs will really garner more eyeballs and thus developers, but there are plenty of opportunities currently, along with the funds to support it.

Disclaimer: Most of my retirement is in ZEC and I hold a little bit personally. I’m also a member of ZCAP.

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Glad to see you announce @pkr ! And good luck!

Parker and I have talked often since he first contacted me about ZECpages last year. I consider him a friend and a genuine dude. We share a love for Zcash, songbirds, and antiques. A look at his post history will show you beyond any doubt that he thinks for himself and speaks his mind.

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Cheers, @BrunchTime! Thanks for c̶h̶i̶m̶i̶n̶g chirping in…

Some would consider this a trilemma. I consider it the trinity. Bird themed Zcash NFTs and synthetic assets collateralized with real antiques, colocated in a storage facility somewhere in the Swiss Alps, all built on ZSAs.

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Hey @pkr, I know we’re technically competitors at this point, but just want to chime in and say I’m especially glad to see you’re running - looking like the candidates for this ZCG spot are shaping up to be a healthy mix with some very good choices .

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I like your vibe!

Thanks for applying to run for ZCG!

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Hiya @pkr I am using ZCG candidacy threads as a forum to solicit (relevant) feedback on my zingo project.

Since I am both a zingo DevUser, and a ZCAP member this is the natural place for my question:

Do you have feedback on zingo?

Hey @zancas. Just left some feedback and questions on your proposal.

I love that you share my excitement about using Zcash’s memo field to make it more of a platform to build on! Prioritize ACN Platform Features on the Zcash network · Issue #4902 · zcash/zcash · GitHub

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