Olivier Janssens,Jim Harper Bitcoin Foundation Board Members

Olivier Janssens and Jim Harper eventually ended up as the winners of the recently-held Bitcoin Foundation election after procuring 277 and 264 votes, respectively. Their nearest rival Michael Perklin managed to bag only 229 out of the total 440 casted votes.

The election, that was held in order to democratically elect the two new board members for the Bitcoin Foundation, facedcriticism for being poorly managed. The foundation was accused by its lifetime and annual members of parachuting to a new, untested on-blockchain voting platform that eventually turned out to be highly lapsed. This pushed an already-delayed election round to yet another day, only to be executed to conclusion by the foundation’s old voting platform Helios.

The irregularities however never impacted the voters’ favorites, which remained in the same order as they were in the first “result-less” election. Olivier Janssens, who topped the previous election after obtaining a 46.7% voter approval, stayed on top after securing a whopping 63% approval in the runoff election. Similarly, the runner up of the last election, Jim Harper, secured a 60% voter approval this time.

There is a reason why both Janssens and Harper managed to remain on the top of other candidates. Much of this credit goes to their reach of the Bitcoin community. While Janssens, one of the earliest Bitcoin adopters, is also known to be an active participator in funding new Bitcoin startups, his ideas of decentralizing Bitcoin’s core development further seemed to have struck the right chords among the voters.

On the other hand, Harper was probably elected due to his expertise in adapting new policies for digital currency. This senior CATO-institute fellow has already served the Bitcoin Foundation as its Global Policy Counsel; and now, as a board member, is in a much better position to incorporate new ideas and perspectives.

Both the newly elected board members will commence their two year term on March 15th this year.

A Better Leadership Means a Better Bitcoin

The Bitcoin Foundation is indeed being more creative and elaborative in its pursue of bettering Bitcoin — both as a currency and technology. At the start of this year, the organization briefly launched a roundtable event for developers, to discuss the possible future developments in the Bitcoin sector. And only a dew days earlier, it took some necessary steps towards promoting digital currency education, by colluding with a multi-channel social media publisher the theAudience.

The Bitcoin Foundation could indeed be an ideal representative for the Bitcoin community only if it further focuses on positive public exposure, and defends Bitcoin on mainstream levels. The development plans meanwhile appear to be going in the right direction.