The Bitcoin Foundation has announced the need to “pivot”, returning to the roots of the non profit organisation and focusing entirely on Bitcoin core development. Lead by new Executive Director, Patrick Murck the Foundation plans to distance themselves from the education and policy responsibilities that they’ve overseen in recent years. Jinyoung Lee England, director of communications for the foundation announced the changes on their blog yesterday evening
[blockquote]In the beginning, the foundation did it all — public policy, education and outreach, core development — primarily because there was no one else to do it. Thankfully we’ve come a long way since then and as the ecosystem matures, just as with any startup, its time to start shedding hats and specializing.[/blockquote]
Community Feedback
Over the last few weeks and months, the foundation which has often come under scrutiny from the Bitcoin community have reached out, participating in several AMA sessions on Reddit and producing several surveys to better understand what areas people would like them to focus on. The feedback from these has been crucial, shaping the foundation’s new direction
[blockquote]Here’s what stood out to us: 54.66% of our individual members joined just to support the cause 51% accumulatively believe core development is the most important work of the foundation 57% are most worried about scalability It couldn’t be clearer. We’ve found our true calling. Our members are signaling that its time to return to our roots and that is to focus on funding the ongoing core development to build out the critical infrastructure that serves as the foundation of this brand new digital ecosystem.[/blockquote]
Changes
Returning to core devlopment, the Bitcoin Foundation have pledged additional resources, which is something likely to bring a smile to developers already involved in the project including Mike Hearn who earlier this year explained how concerned he was about work on core development
[blockquote]There are occasional fixes and things submitted by other people, but the bulk of the work is being done by Gavin and those guys,” says Hearn. “I am a bit concerned by the fact that we don’t have a lot of people turning up and doing really serious, useful work on the core.[/blockquote]
Further to the addition of a new full time developer, the foundation also mentioned the launch of developer training workshops and certifications due to launch in 2015
[blockquote]Some of the practical steps that are underway as we change course are: shedding anything that does not support core development, preparing to bring on at least one additional full-time developer for testing within the next several months, and launching at least 4 developer training and certification workshops around the world starting 2015.[/blockquote]
Do you think this is the right move for The Foundation? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment box below.