We recently reached out to Bitcoin core-developer Gavin Andresen for some feedback on CryptoVoter’s proposal to hold a Bitcoin [BTC] shareholder-style blockchain vote to poll coin holders on whether to increase the maximum transaction blocksize and he kindly responded with some helpful feedback. (see https://twitter.com/gavinandresen/status/657563129493065728)

After careful consideration of Gavin Andresen’s response, we believe that CryptoVoter’s Shareholder-style Blockchain Voting proposal would be most effective for use with alternative cryptocoins and private-blockchains, and inappropriate for use on the Bitcoin blockchain because it would require long-term Bitcoin holders to move secured coins out of cold storage, hardware wallets and multisig protected addresses in order to vote.

Even though the CryptoVoter voting client is open-source and users’ coins remain secure throughout the voting process, we believe it would be reckless to ask large Bitcoin holders to take their coins out of secure storage to cast non-binding votes.

Accordingly, CryptoVoter is cancelling the upcoming Bitcoin [BTC] blockchain vote on whether to increase the maximum blocksize.  Instead, we will focus on utilizing CryptoVoter’s shareholder-style blockchain voting on smaller altcoins (like Bitcoin-sCrypt [BTCS]) and private blockchains.

Since CryptoVoter’s founding, our goal has been to help strengthen the Bitcoin ecosystem and while we intend to still move forward with our mission to decentralize Cryptocoin development, we want to do so in a responsible way that encourages Bitcoin best-practices when it comes to security and Bitcoin storage.  We hope our supporters understand.

As a self-funded startup this decision to cancel Bitcoin blockchain voting is very costly financially, but we believe it is for the greater good.   (On a side note, if you support this decision, want to help, or are just feeling generous, please consider sending a donation our way:  1P7e62V3fgqcV2gpPchTr8Wz7uUZ22uRRi)

Thanks for understanding our decision and  we look forward to continuing our work on decentralizing Cryptographic currency development.