Few days ago on Facebook my old friend (and former manager) Alexey Ivasyuk started discussion about Bitcoin - peer-to-peer virtual currency. While personally being skeptical about currency based on algorithm of "intense process of bruteforcing" it actually brought to memory brainstorming sessions with my mentor Mitar - Israeli curator of UkrNet.
Back in 1998 after internship at ISP TexasNet (San Antionio, Texas) i was very determined to find job at Internet Service Provider. In Summer 1999 the search brought me to ISP UkrNet and i was assigned to work on Billing and Accounting System for dial-up users. Business Architect who put all requirements together was Mitar. But besides just driving requirements he was mentoring me on how to develop multitier systems. It was first time, in 1999, that i heard 3 layered design: data layer, business logic layer, and presentation layer.
Our billing&accounting system had PostgreSQL as database tier; it had vast majority of business logic written on PL/pgSQL; and multiple presentation layers. Not at all obvious one was from Cisco NAS via Tacacs+ AAA server - it was my crown jewel as developer to customize Tacacs to make PostgreSQL inquiries via ANSI C calls to PL/pgSQL functions. Rest of presentation layers were few websites written on PHP under Apache web server for consumer self-service, internal sales and customer care personnel, and IT superuser console.
While all above design was envisioned by Mitar, he actually was not software developer, or at least he didn't write even single line of code for above design. This fact was actually made me smile when i recently read autobiography on Steve Jobs, written by Walter Isaacson. There was well described arguments between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, where Steve was criticizing Bill for lack of vision and style, and Bill was criticizing Steve for lack of coding experience. Irony was that i used to be skeptical on Mitar's ideas due to same reason - i didn't see him coding, while he kept telling me that i lack big picture vision.
That argument was especially true when we were discussing internal currency unit used in billing&accounting - eQ. Sounded like "eCu" from e-Currency. Mitar's vision was to spin it as virtual currency that will go way beyond purchases of prepaid dial-up hours or premium web content. He dreamed about e-commerce web sites accepting eQ as method of payments. Now it seems very trivial now, but please note that we are talking about years 1999-2000.
I didn't see it happening in Mitar's way and kept telling that eQ should be limited to only "seconds and bytes", as how it was already used in billing&accounting system. I did offer scale-ability by envisioning that each domain name would be like separate bank that keep accruing eQ from domain users. Later domain names would trades accrued eQ via supply/demand driven exchange rates. And AAA Tacacs+eQ would be engine behind it:
- A for Authentication of eQ owner;
- A for Authorization of transaction to change ownership of eQ;
- and final A for Accounting of all transactions in the log/database.
Possibility of using eQ as payment method used by website visitors to access web site content was not new either. At that time Banner Exchange Systems were used for exact same purpose - web site owner would present banners on his site and later sell (or exchange) them. My idea was to drop advertisements from web sites for person willing to pay few cents to access site without annoying ads.
At the end of the day neither of us was right. Overall system grew up to have only 3 Internet Service Providers in Ukraine that were using variation of that billing&accounting system, and that's about all potential it had...
In 2005 under signed H1B contract to work in USA i had to drop all software support for clients in Ukraine. But that is another story...
Roman Havrylyak
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