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What Happens Next With the Bitcoin Foundation?

Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:44 PM
Joel Dalais
Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:44 PM

Bruce Fenton, Executive Director of the Bitcoin Foundation, presented to the wider public the slides and information that he was presenting at Inside Bitcoins NYC. The slides provide and reinforce information about what the Bitcoin Foundation is and what control they have over Bitcoin.

Bruce Fenton:  Inside Bitcoins NYC is going on now and I just made an important update. The attached PowerPoint covers my speech. The main key points are the transparency / governance initiatives being implemented now and the next projects for the future. Please let me know your thoughts and if this is the type of direction you want to see more of.

The slide opens with the clarification on the Bitcoin Foundations relationship to Bitcoin Core development before going on to describe in more details what is and what will occur.

  • We don’t represent Bitcoin
  • We don’t control Bitcoin
  • Bitcoin is independent and decentralized

The Foundation no longer financially supports the three core developers that it was supporting previously, Cory Fields, Wladimir van der Laan and Gavin Andresen. All three of these developers (who are three of five that have commit access) are now being financially supported by MIT for continuing work independently on Bitcoin core.

Gavin Andresen will remain as the Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation and is likely to continue to attend DevCores around the world. The Foundation will also continue to do all it can to support core development. This continued support might come in the form of providing grants or support work in one form or another.

Also read: New Executive Director of the Bitcoin Foundation

No Founding Members

Bruce will be suggesting to the board that Satoshi should be removed as a founding member, as it is not accurate. He will also be suggesting that all founding members be removed so that the power of individuals within the organization is reduced while working to use effective decentralization, crowd-funding, and other means.

He has highlighted the public push for more transparency, mentioning the further use of Swarm for block chain voting. However, not for elections as wrongly reported  by Coindesk.

Additional proposals included plans to re-use Swarm to conduct blockchain-based voting in foundation elections

There are many other instances where block chain voting could be put to use, and thorough testing should be applied in each instance. When asked  via the Foundations forums Bruce responded as below;

Joel Dalais: Swarm ‘idea’ was good, but please make sure it gets some testing from members/public before using it again.

Bruce Fenton: Definitely Joel and we’d also use it for something less important than an election.

The use of Consider.it (also known as The Distributed Opinion) was also highlighted as a means for open discussion. The Distributed Opinion is a proposals platform where Foundation members and non-members can put their opinions on the Foundation direction and actions, comment on such proposals, and make new proposals for consideration.

Implementation

With a promise to implement every item listed on the slide, the Foundation plans to make the organization the “most transparent of any organization of any type, anywhere.

And contrary to the often outcry of “the Foundation is useless”, the presentation slide ends with a list of Next Steps that detail what the Bitcoin Foundation will be doing in the near to long term.

These range from arranging and hosting DevCore conferences, building a media network, supporting Bitcoin.org, providing grants to developers and community members, working on the Threats to Bitcoin and standing in the Defense of Bitcoin, and building standards.

You can view the slide in full here .