Update:
Gavin Andersen has contacted us via Twitter regarding this article. He has stated that he is still the Chief scientist for the Bitcoin Foundation. Bitcoinist is reaching out for additional comments, and apologizes for the confusion.
Gavin Andresen, if you do not know, is a well-regarded Bitcoin celebrity of sorts. Most known for his work for Bitcoin, Gavin has access to the alert key that allows him to broadcast messages about critical network problems to all client users. This shows the amount of trust Satoshi Nakamoto put into Gavin, whom he contacted back and forth with via email for some time before Satoshi went dark.
Also Read: Coinbase Announces Bitcoin Hackathon BitHack V2
Gavin also holds a position at the Bitcoin Foundation as chief scientist. Rather, he did. As of 4/22/15, Gavin announced that he will be joining the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Imitative, which he announced on his blog site.
Gavin as well as Wladimir van der Laan and Cory Fields, whom both were part of Bitcoin Foundation, have decided that leaving the Bitcoin Foundation and joining MIT Media Lab’s newly launched Digital Currency Initiative is the best course of action.
If you do not know about MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Intuitive, essentially MIT wants to bring people who are experienced about specific topics to help provide research into digital currency.
The goal of this initiative is to bring together global experts in areas ranging from cryptography, to economics, to privacy, to distributed systems, to take on this important new area of research. The effort will reach across the MIT campus, and we look forward to including collaborations with leading experts around the world.
By achieving this, the Digital Currency initiative hopes to achieve three objectives:
- Conduct research and engage more students on digital currency topics that address questions about security, stability, scalability, privacy, and economics.
- Convene governments, nonprofits, and the private sector to research and test concepts that have high social impact.
- Provide evidence-based research to support existing and future policy and standards.
Media Lab will work with an extensive list of people besides Gavin and the other two including people like MIT CSAIL’s Nickolai Zeldovich as well as Jeremy Rubin, the undergraduate who helped run the MIT Bitcoin Project. Students at the Media Lab and across campus are welcome to join, so are interested companies, developers, and forward-thinking policy makers.
With an estimated $600 million invested into Bitcoin by venture capitalists over the last 12 months according to the Media Labs post, it would be wise for other organizations to take similar actions if they want to stay ahead.
Gavin is quick to assure people in his blog post regarding the topic that while they are moving away from the Bitcoin Foundation, development of the Bitcoin project overall will not stop.
Diversity in developer support is good because it means less disruption if support from any individual, company, or organization fails.
What do you think of Gavin moving to MIT? Would you prefer that he stayed at the Bitcoin Foundation? Let us know in the comments below!
Photo Source: Rise and Rise of Bitcoin