The Bitcoin Foundation has developed the new voting system, which records each vote on the blockchain.
The Bitcoin Foundation announced this week that it has completed the development of new blockchain-based voting system, thus ensuring higher level of elections’ transparency.
The Bitcoin Foundation has also partnered with a decentralized crowdfunding platform, called Swarm, which provided each member with a special wallet for voting.
The new system, which is still in the beta version, is ready for its first round of elections. The voting will end on February 28th and the results will be unveiled on March 1st.
“The Bitcoin Foundation is the first to attempt a vote of this kind on the blockchain and we are excited to have our Bitcoin Foundation members participate in this historic moment,” the organization wrote in its blog.
With the new system, the votes of the Foundation’s members will be recorded on the bitcoin blockchain.
“The Foundation’s mission is to advance blockchain technology and this is an important new avenue of innovation,” said new executive director of the Bitcoin Foundation Patrick Murck.
“While we may not have the smoothest experience in this experimental launch, it’s important for us to push the boundaries and spark innovation — even if things get a little messy sometimes,” he added.
The members of the organization responded in different ways. While some supported the move, the others criticized it for a potential bad influence on the voting process.
The initial version of the new voting system appeared to be imperfect, according to feedback from the first users. According to Murck, when the previous Helios voting system was first introduced, the foundation received a lot of complaints too.
“These are growing pains. The important thing to remember is that we are all in this, building the digital economy, together. When we used Helios last year for the first time, we also encountered user confusion and technical issues,” said Brian Goss, Elections Committee Chairman.
“However, because our members provided helpful feedback and pull requests, in the end we were able to make functional improvements to the code so that it works better today than it did yesteryear.”
“In response to the difficulties with user interface and ballot presentation, in order to maintain the integrity of the runoff election, as promised, we are hitting “reboot” and starting over,” the organization stated.
Some in the industry have rebuked the idea of using the blockchain technology for voting, as it is usually applied in the financial sector. Still, Murck noted that the foundation should be open to this type of initiatives.
Polina is an undergraduate student at Belarusian State Economic University (BSEU) where she is studying at the faculty of International Business Communication for a degree specializing in Intercultural Communication. In her spare time she enjoys drawing, music and travelling.
