This Thursday, June 28th, 2018 was held the second virtual meeting between Factom Authority Node Operators. This meeting brought together up to 31 speakers representing the entirety of the first 21 node operators.

As the Factom protocol is decentralized, it is up to the community to develop it and promote its use. To this effect, several committees have been created, cutting across different parts of the protocol: updating the source code, deploying the code, marketing and promotion, finding use cases, etc. Participation in these committees is based on volunteering. Today’s meeting made it possible to clarify certain points regarding these committees, their mode of operation, and self-regulation.

To this, let us also add that it was determined that virtual meetings between node operators would be held the last Thursday of each month, at 19h UTC, 21h for France. A third important point that was addressed is the remuneration of people developing and maintaining the testnet; the testnet is a technically facsimile copy of the Factom blockchain except that it is only intended for testing solutions testing before they get deployed on the mainnet, i.e. the Factom blockchain. Having an effective and working testnet is important, and people ensuring its quality must of course be paid for this work. The modalities remain subject to discussion on the forum Factomize.com.

Another important point is that a third-party audit has been announced. The Factom protocol is decentralized, and means must be put in place to prove that it is actually the case. One of the first solutions is to prove that each of the Factom node operators does exist as such and constitutes a purely independent entity of Factom Inc; Factom Inc is the company that has realized the Factom protocol. Michael Perklin, currently security manager at Shapeshift, is the person mandated to perform this audit. Michael has already carried out audit work on behalf of Factom, notably during the finalization of M1; Milestone 1.

Several votes took place via the forum Factomize.com during this virtual meeting. Each of the points treated received overwhelming approval. Again, we can deduce that node operators work with a common idea and vision for the Factom protocol.

Documents related to this meeting can be consulted here.