This article was written by Elisha Owusu Akyaw, a Contributor to the PIVX Project, and is sponsored by PIVX
PIVX Masternode owners have voted overwhelmingly to give up voting rights, extending governance of the private instant verified transaction digital currency to all its holders.
Blockchain evolution
It is no gainsaying that Nakamoto Satoshi’s original intention of a decentralized community involves the process of full participation by every individual represented in the democratized ecosystem.
The Blockchain technology does not involve centralized servers in specific locations
The Blockchain technology does not involve centralized servers in specific locations. It is a technology where every participant plays a part in maintaining both the network and its security. Governance on the Blockchain is typically a decentralized democracy. This simply means that decisions taken within the community must be as agreed by the majority of users.
Thus, issues of monopoly of control and manipulation of the system is very highly minimized since the intrinsic cost of achieving a consensus opinion of majority of the participants may eventually outweigh the perceived benefits of an ulterior intention.
Bloomberg
Over time, as the Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) develops, prevailing systems of governance can be argued to have gradually steered away from true decentralization. This is observed in the ownership of huge mining farms in the Proof of Work (PoW) system of Bitcoin . These huge mining farm owners make it almost impossible for individuals who attempt to mine independently on their CPUs to compete, therefore the system is seen to move gradually into a partially centralized system of governance.
Existing limitations
A clear example of this is as presently observed in the ongoing scaling debate of Bitcoin. A situation where majority of Bitcoin users are resigned to the decision of a smaller percentage of the entire community (the miners). Such a scenario is argued to be far from the acclaimed decentralized form of governance contained in the early proposal of the technology.
Other systems of governance, such as Dash’s Proof of Service (PoS) have also been noted to have their own limitations at enabling true decentralization. In such cases, it is the Masternode owners (MNOs) that represent the governing council of such systems. They retain the exclusive voting right within the community.
Retracing the steps
In its attempt at restoring true decentralization and providing an all inclusive platform where every user has a voice, Private Instant Verified Transaction (PIVX) proposed the Community Designed Governance (CDG).
The ultimate goal of PIVX is to replace the current Governance System with a Community Designed Governance (CDG) System, which will restructure and redistribute the governance voting power to be inclusive of anyone who owns PIVX.
The identity and sustainability of the Distributed Ledger Technology is largely dependent on its governance structure
PIVX’s proposal requires that present MNOs will give up their voting rights and every PIVX owner becomes an eligible voter. The proposal has received an overwhelming support as the voting statistics by present MNOs for its implementation stands at 1288/0 in a “Yes/No” position respectively which represents 62% of Masternode Owners.
This development means that the following statement - “PIVX will work towards a ‘Community Designed Governance’ system that changes the distribution of votes, to include the entire PIVX community.” - will be added to the PIVX.org Governance page as a starting point, after which the next stage at working towards the CDG will commence.
The identity and sustainability of the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is largely dependent on its governance structure. Although the CDG is still a working progress, it could eventually become the pathway to lead the entire ecosystem back to Satoshi’s original intention.
