Bitcoin Foundation Elections – February
The Bitcoin Foundation is a Bitcoin development organisation that currently focuses on supporting a few core developers and expanding this support to include specialist programmers that work on external viable Bitcoin infrastructure software through grant programs.
The Foundation also attends conferences for the promotion of Bitcoin and was previously involved in global Bitcoin adoption on the regulatory and political front.
This February, there will be new Bitcoin Foundation Elections to elect persons to two Director positions that will be representative of the wider community as individual membership director seats. The polls for this election will be open from February the 13th to February the 19th (2015), nominations for these seats will end on February 6th.
The Bitcoin Foundation defines the roles of a Director as a threefold obligation. (1) Hiring and supporting the leadership team. (2) Reviewing goals and financials to ensure the team is performing in line with the Foundations mission. (3) Leveraging their network (and expanding this) to fundraise and make sure of proper resources to create opportunities for high-level strategic partnerships. For the definitions of a Director position, check here.
These two individual seats are currently held by Jon Matonis, the previous Executive Director of the Foundation and Gavin Andresen (Lead Scientist). The current nominations for the election is as follows;
Jim Harper- Cody Wilson
- Bruce Fenton
- Olivier Janssens
- Michael Perklin
- Colin Gallagher
- Theo Chino
- Dima Starodubcev
- Scott Morgan
- Bayan Towfiq
- Francis Pouliot
- Jeremy Gardner
If you wish to vote then you, need to have either an annual ($25) membership or a lifetime ($250) membership to the Foundation.
To nominate, you must be an annual or lifetime individual member. Members may nominate anyone, including himself or herself. Nominees do not have to be a current member. Anyone nominated by a member can be elected to the board. Nominees need not be members during the election process but are expected to become members of the Foundation upon election as a director.
Past elections for the Foundation Board has required a quorum or 2/3 from membership. So it should be noted by interested parties that this has recently been changed via an amendment to the Foundation bylaws to a ½ requirement of “active” members. The reason for this is that a lot of members (lifetime or annual) provide their support by becoming members and then discontinue interaction under the (likely) assumption that the Foundation will continue providing the infrastructure to development and support without the need for each and every member to continuously interact.
This causes a distortion in the voting system if the election is based upon the entirety of the membership, meaning, that it would be difficult to elect any new board members if a substantial amount of members were not voting due to being busy with their personal endeavours.
Following The Story
What does it mean to stand as a Board Director of the Bitcoin Foundation? For each individual person it depends upon their own skills and definition of their roles and what they wish to contribute, whether their aim is to bring down the Foundation, to rebuild issues that have been discarded, to reinforce its current direction or to bring it towards new potential avenues. Each potential Director brings to it their particular flavour and should be welcomed to put their thoughts and opinions forward.
Over the next month, up to and including the voting period, CCN.com will be reaching out to each candidate that accepts their nominations. We hope that this will be of assistance by helping to provide a clearer picture for the public and to ascertain the candidate’s thoughts on what they hope to achieve upon a successful campaign.
For primary source information the most recent Elections Update from the Foundation can be found here, and more information can be found directly on the forums here. Questions relating to the election should at first call be forwarded to the Elections Committee . If you are not a Bitcoin Foundation member (and thus cannot post on the forums), then you can direct your questions to the Chair of the Election Committee, Brian Goss, who can be reach via [email protected] .
This is our Foundation, and it is what we make of it. It is our responsibility as members to do our part in making the Foundation what we want it to be. What do you want it to be? You don’t need permission from anyone to nominate a candidate…just post here to nominate by the 6th of February. ~ Brian Goss, Chair, Election Committee, Bitcoin Foundation.
Whether you are a member or not, and whether you vote or not, this shall be an interesting one to watch. As relatively near the start of the new year the two new directors will help shape the direction of the Bitcoin Foundation for better or worse over the course of 2015.
Disclaimer: The author is a Lifetime Member of the Bitcoin Foundation and has no affiliation with any of the nominated candidates.
Images from the Bitcoin Foundation and Shutterstock.
