We have laid out a blockchain comparison to explain why and when we will integrate with certain blockchains. Follow My Vote software will initially be launched on the BitShares blockchain. Although we are intentionally designing our software to be as portable to different blockchains as possible, we did need to select one as our initial platform. We have identified three major blockchains that merit our consideration: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and BitShares.

Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a good option because it was the first blockchain, and it benefits from a great deal of network effect since so many people currently use it; however, it was not designed for third party integrations and thus building applications on the Bitcoin blockchain requires numerous tricks to co-opt various features of Bitcoin into purposes for which they were not intended. This is possible, but not ideal for an initial launch. Moreover, Follow My Vote understands that Bitcoin was originally intended to be a proof of concept, and while it has grown far beyond that role, there do remain questions about Bitcoin’s maintainability in the future. These questions are highlighted by the controversy over upgrading the chain to allow larger blocks, and the addition of unpopular functionality like Return By Fee.

