Bitcoin Association, the Switzerland-based global industry organization that works to advance business with Bitcoin SV, today announces the establishment and eleven initial members of its Bitcoin SV Technical Standards Committee. The Committee represents a major step by the Bitcoin SV ecosystem to professionalise the development of Bitcoin in order to support major enterprise use and facilitate global adoption.

The Technical Standards Committee will be chaired by Steve Shadders, Chief Technology Officer of nChain – the globally leading blockchain research, development & advisory firm. One of the world’s foremost Bitcoin experts, Shadders serves as Technical Director of the Bitcoin SV Node team, overseeing work on the Bitcoin SV Node software and infrastructure.

The other ten Committee members represent four continents, seven countries and diverse sectors of the Bitcoin SV ecosystem – including wallets, mining, applications, token solutions, venture investment and banking.

Name Advertisement	Title & Company	Country
Steve Shadders (Chair)	Chief Technology Officer, nChain	United Kingdom Advertisement
James Belding	Co-Founder & CEO, Tokenized	Australia
Angus Brown	Co-Founder & CEO, Centbee Advertisement	South Africa
Ryan X. Charles	Founder & CEO, Money Button	USA
Alex Fauvel Advertisement	General Partner, Two Hop Ventures	Netherlands
Masumi Hamahira	Executive Advisor for Islamic Banking Window – MUFG Bank (Malaysia)	Malaysia Advertisement
Justin Laue	Chief Engineer & Co-founder, BitBoss	USA
James McCloud	Chief Technology Officer, The Hopper Advertisement	United Kingdom
Andrew Mee	Solutions Strategist, nChain	United Kingdom
Kalev Trusaalu Advertisement	Chief Operations Officer, Domineum	Estonia
Lin Zheming	Founder & CEO, Mempool and DotWallet	China Advertisement

The mission statement of the Technical Standards Committee is:

To promote technical excellence and improve Bitcoin SV utility by enhancing interoperability through standardization by:

• Facilitating industry participation in the development of global standards
• Ensuring technical standards are maintained and freely available

Bitcoin Association Founding President Jimmy Nguyen commented:

“Our Association is professionalising the Bitcoin industry, and that includes leading development of standards. Technology history has repeatedly demonstrated the value of seeking consensus on technical standards to fuel industry growth through compatibility and interoperability between different businesses. The Technical Standards Committee was formed now to ensure that Bitcoin SV grows to support a world where all business and online activity can be on-chain, like how the Internet grew with standards set to support a world where everything can be online.”

The Bitcoin SV ecosystem has rapidly grown to over 400 known Bitcoin SV projects and ventures around the world, with new additions each month. Developers and businesses are discovering the value of a massively-scaled Bitcoin blockchain, capable of huge transaction volumes, micropayments, greater data capacity, and many advanced applications.

Seeing this rapid expansion, in September 2019, Bitcoin Association published a global call for interest to serve on a Technical Standards Committee.  From numerous applications, top candidates were invited to a five-day formation workshop in London, United Kingdom in January 2020.  The workshop assessed final Committee selections, and evaluated the governance processes and resource requirements.

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Steve Shadders, Chair of the Technical Standards Committee, said:

“I am honoured to lead the Technical Standards Committee and work with my fellow committee members towards global adoption of Bitcoin SV. Using organisations like the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) as a model, our Committee will focus on governance of the standards process and provide an out-of-the-box toolset for use by specific technical workgroups. Substantial work for recommending standards will be carried out by designated workgroups for each of the different technical areas, meaning that there will be many opportunities for participation from the wider Bitcoin SV ecosystem.”

Call for Participation in First Workgroup: Merkle Inclusion Proofs

In order to test and improve its process, the Technical Standard Committee’s first workgroup has been formed to produce a standard data format for Merkle inclusion proofs. Merkle proofs are vital to all uses of Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) described in the original Bitcoin whitepaper, and form the foundation of most user interactions with the Bitcoin network. The Committee is calling for expressions of interest to join the internal review panel for this standard during the drafting process.  A public review process will follow this. To express interest in joining this pilot workgroup as an early stage reviewer, please email [email protected] outlining your subject matter expertise in this area and how you are a stakeholder in the subject matter. Applications will close 3 July 2020.

More detail on the proposal for this standards workgroup is available here.

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Bitcoin Association Leadership

As Bitcoin Association continues to expand its activities, including initiatives such as the Technical Standards Committee, Jimmy Nguyen and Steve Shadders will focus on their Association roles, respectively, as Founding President and as Chair of the Bitcoin SV Technical Standards Committee.

The organization’s Executive Committee is comprised of Calvin Ayre, Founder of Ayre Group and CoinGeek; Stefan Matthews, Chairman of TAAL; and Jodok Wicki,  partner at CMS von Erlach Poncet Ltd and legal counsel to the Association.