Topic: A serious proposal for a replacement non-profitable elected Bitcoin Foundation (Read 2211 times)

I don't mind people creating a new foundation: The more people wanting to spend time furthering bitcoin's cause the better.

But I don't like gratuitous bashing of the current foundation, for all I have read here against them is eighter vague assumptions, or plain lies.

If you read https://bitcoinfoundation.org/about/governance, you would know that the members of the foundations are not self appointed, they are elected. And that their tenure lasts 2 years. The current one finishes this July.

Mister Gox for example was elected. You just have to not vote for him when his seat is open again. If people were removed from office each time they displeased somebody, then nobody would ever hold a seat more than a day. Gox fucked up, and I will not vote for him again. But I see no problem of him finishing his term, especially since it is soon.

I have not seen the foundation being overly friendly with gox eighter: with all the malleability incident, they have been pretty clear that it is gox that fucked up, even if gox's boss is on the board.

99.9% of the crypto industry? More like 0.99%.

A board, a foundation, and especially a board of a foundation are inherently charged with doing the right thing, and setting a right example.  

how much tenure do you think it takes to do the right thing?

how much knowledge do you think it takes to do the right thing?

The CEO of Mt. Gox has arguably more bitcoin knowledge than 99.9% of the cryptocurrency industry, but clearly not enough to steer his ship straight,
the same could be said of BitInstant CEO, who was not only a foundation board member but also a founding member and vice Chair at the time of his resignation.  

If you have ALL OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNIVERSE but not enough to do the right thing, you're only good to lawyers wanting billable hours, not to the public.

This foundation rarely engages with this this community, nor do they listen to use. Else mister Gox wouldn't be on the board any more.

A new foundation should focus on furthering  Bitcoin's integration into the mainstream. Its difference between the old model would be that: Members are chosen by the majority and each seat is on a temporary basis;  not self appointed. Accounts are public and with expenditure being properly scrutinised. It is a NON PROFIT organisation. It would engage with the community on a  frequent basis and consult on projects that would be a sensible use of funds. i.e marketing and facilities; new atms, bitcoin banners and logos being put in shop stores that accept it...

I feel right now, that Bitcoin is not being served correctly. It is a fanstastic concept that needs coordinated activity so that it can succeed. It is being pressured from all sides; incompetent exchange managers, fraudsters exploiting it, hackers seeking to disrupt it and the media attempting to destroy it.

What would the purpose of a "New" Foundation be?

The Foundation's origin was/is based around a core group of developers and business partners with the purpose of enabling a more democratic representation to the open source project we know as Bitcoin.

So it would seem that the BEST way to circumvent the existing collaboration would be:

1 - Establish a team of technical resources that can execute updates and enhancements in a more timely fashion
2 - Garner the support of said technical team from a few substantial business partners that support the new direction

There is no reason why there has to only be ONE Bitcoin open source project. Start a new one and have it compete and succeed against the existing client.

It does not seem to me that the Foundation has any real authority or power over the Bitcoin code (anyone can download it and re-release it), so just create your own project and organization.

No. You're new, and you probably have 1/10th of the knowledge that some experienced members here have (I won't mention any names though).

Absolutely. The notion that one needs to be here for a set time to have a sense of entitlement is exactly what should be discouraged

Everything in cryptocurrency land is "NEW".

The person with the absolute most exp in the bitcoin world only has 5 yrs exp; 
this forum is 3 yrs old,  and the bitcoin foundation website is only 2.

It was only MONTHS ago when bitcoin was in double digits across the board, and single digits about a year ago.


All things considered, tenure is not relevant.

You can't really let some new comers create the new Foundation either.

We as humans living in advanced societies are CONDITIONED to operate top down leadership communities, we are accustomed to complaining from the bottom up, so when a problem exists the NORMAL thing to do is complaint to management.

The FOUNDATION positioned themselves as major management for major bitcoin matters, as such when the Silk Road issue came to fore, the foundation was expected to move on it, likewise it is expected to make a meaningful move on Mt Gox.  If it cannot, will not, and/or should not do so then perhaps they should reconsider how they want to be viewed in the bitcoin community.

I'm a proponent for self-regulation, Mt Gox screwed up, nevertheless they pointed to a known and existing problem, and made it a major issue.    Any board member that makes a big deal out of ANYTHING that results in the widespread disruption of the market the issue MUST be investigated and acted upon.    If it is determined by the board that the problem was NOT a major problem and that the board member acted irresponsibly they must remove that individual from the board.   OTOH if the board determines that the board members actions were valid then they need to stand by that member in a major way for the stability of the market.   If on the odd chance that they find that the board member cried foul BUT the no confidence vote went in his favor, then they should tacitly support the board member from a distance, in which case the board takes the heat with the board member.

They can take another no-confidence vote if they wish.

What about the remaining 96% of the world population? What is the U.S. based Bitcoin foundation doing?

Wow, you joined the forum 8 days ago and already trying to stage a coup.

"If you build it they will come."


My reservation is that there is not enough of a ground swell for any community based organization, the current foundation is NOT community based, yet somehow people think that it should be treated as such.  

This thread needs a minimum of 100 SOLID members to publicly say yes they will support the effort before I feel comfortable that there is a reasonable basis for a community effort; someone else may feel 2 people is enough,  

More importantly, I believe that community efforts that grow out of negativity, protest, revolution, or hate are often short lived, or quickly sidelined, or become insignificant fast.    Community efforts that grow from positivity often result in slow widespread and long-term adoption.

What I fail to see is how your "new" foudation would be better than the current one.

The current one's members are elected. Just as you propose. The current one's donations are publicitly available.

You don't like Karpeles on it?
1. You couldn't have know he'd fuck up when he was elected. It's alwayes a risk, a risk that would affect the "new" foundation too.
2. Don't vote for him when his seat gets re-elected.

You don't like their work?
I don't know what th've done wrong... They tried calming people when mtgox claimeda bug in the protocol. They gave thorough explanations! And they helped many people deal with malleability. But if mtgox acts stupid after all that, there is nkthing they can do.

The've sent people to Washington convincing lawmakers that cryptocurrencies are good. And their point of view was well recieved.

You think that malleability should have been solved by now since it was known since 2011?
1. Even if some developpers are on the foundation, the foundation are not the developpers.
2. Most developpers tought that even tough malleability was a poor design choice, it is not a "bug" per say since it does not prevent functionnality, if everybody implements the protocol correctly (i.e. Not expecting txid as immutable but instead checking for the spent status of inputs to know if the transaction went trough.). Not being a bug thus does not require being fixes.

I don't really know how they could have done better...

MAC id can easy be spoofed. It is somewhat difficult to "steal" mac id from someone (it is what mac id does, provide a way to uniquely identify devices on a network. But assuming a random (and propably unique) mac id is really easy

This would not prevent people from using bots to cast multiple votes within that timeframe. Captcha can prevent bots, but cannon prevent people from hiring people for casting votes for them. Or event do it for free if there is an incentive to do so.
A few years ago, the Times "online person of the year" vote was completely rigged by 4chaners who casted thousands of vote to put some peoples in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc... place such as the first letter of their names would spell a word. All that for free, despite a captcha, only for the lulz.


Then you're just shifting the problem. If someone is able to create 100 fake identities for himself, he has 100 times more chances to be randomly picked.

In fact maybe he me be picked multiple times. Unless those drafted are required to physically move to the foundation HQ, we cannot know. It's the same problem as with other solution.

I think that the problem of ensuring "one person, one vote" has been on people's mind since the dawn of Internet. A lot of smart people have spent countless hours trying to solve it, and nobody has ever found a satisfactory answer.

The closest we had is "proof of work", which essentially gave "one CPU, one vote"... Until people started  making ASIC to have more weight that everybody.

(I guess votes could be cast that way... Requiring people to solve a PoW problem of say... 30 minutes on average, during a voting period of 2 hours. If the problem is not SHA-256 based, then ASIC are useless; it could use scrypt... But it would be funny seeing the bitcoin foundation use scrypt.)

You're building a site while nobody has agreed on who will lead nor who will be in this Foundation?
That makes sense.

I think we can operate along side it. The current foundation will die a slow death if donations cease. The first objective will be to get a site up and running (which is in the works as we speak) and a forum for ideas to be debated and decided upon. With alot of hard work, transparency and honesty we can make the old foundation redundant.

And can i ask..the most important question: Are their accounts publicly available for scrutiny~? There is a big difference between the proposed and the current. The proposed would be a Non Profit Organisation, would not have matt 'i lost all your money' karpeles on it and would have public accounts. Where do all the donations go? In someones pocket?