Bitcoin.com's Bitcoinocracy: Decentralized Voting Powered by Bitcoin
Bitcoin.com is pleased to announce the release of its revamped voting tool, Bitcoinocracy, at vote.bitcoin.com. Bitcoinocracy allows bitcoiners to vote with their bitcoin holdings on block size, segregated witness, and many other bitcoin proposals.
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Bitcoinocracy Enables Bitcoin Stakeholders to ‘Put Money Where Their Mouth Is’
In 2015, Bitcoinocracy creator Arsen Gasparian developed a tool that enables voting backed by monetary value and transparency. Bitcoin is not “spent” on Bitcoinocracy —rather, addresses and the bitcoins therein are applied to totals in support of different sides of various issues. This solution can show not how many people support an issue, but rather how many bitcoins support an issue.
Gasparian explains that the idea of Proof of Stake (PoS) voting is not new and has been used in the past with traditional stakeholder voting procedures. The idea of Bitcoinocracy was born from the heated block size debate because Gasparian felt meaningful discussions were becoming controlled and censored on forums. So, he created a tool that would allow the people to “put their money where their mouth is” on various issues.
“That’s why I decided to eventually implement a way for the Bitcoin holders to express their opinion anonymously and incontrovertibly,” explains Gasparian. “I hope that Bitcoinocracy will allow bitcoin owners to overcome any kind of censorship and express their opinion on issues that are important to them. Bitcoin holders are not just clients of a proprietary payment system. They are the owners – the stakeholders that give it value and pay miners the mining reward. They have something at stake, and they should have a voice. It is only fair. I hope Bitcoinocracy will give them the power.”
The Power of Bitcoin Signatures
Users of Bitcoinocracy can vote on existing propositions such as development, fungibility concerns, BIP proposals, and even other subjects like whether or not a God exists. Users can additionally submit their own propositions to the platform on subjects they believe are important voting topics. “Most popular wallets support the set of BIPs (BIP21 and BIP70-72) to simplify the purchase/payment process,” says Gasparian. “All the user needs to do is to click the hyperlink on the website and to confirm the payment.”
“I think a typical Bitcoin user doesn’t yet fully understand the power of Bitcoin signatures. They can be used not only for payments, but also for authentication, voting, signing contracts, etc. Part of the reason why people don’t use them is that the signing functionality is often hidden or inconvenient.”
Bitcoin.com encourages readers to check out the Bitcoinocracy platform. Maybe there’s an important issue you want people to vote on. Perhaps you’d like to contribute your signature to a pre-existing proposition. Bitcoinocracy is an entirely decentralized way the Bitcoin community can measure a stance on any given proposal or debate. By utilizing the Bitcoin blockchain, voting is cast with bitcoin through a cryptographic signature. The blockchain’s immutability ensures signed votes cannot be manipulated and will always be available to the public.
Check out Bitcoinocracy at vote.bitcoin.com today and make your voice heard!
What do you think about Bitcoinocracy? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of Bitcoin.com, and Bitcoinocracy.
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