Governance is a widely prevalent problem in the blockchain space with other more recognized issues such as scalability and security already having numerous use-cases. Moreover, developing effective blockchain governance systems would also help greatly improve corporate governance, increasing the developmental efficiency of other companies across various industries. Currently, the industry lacks tools designed to provide the intricate functionality needed to support the combination of complex models. Governance is the collection of policies and processes enacted to guide organizations successfully through critical events and decision-making. Blockchain-based companies are constantly navigating the challenges related to effectively managing their decentralized communities and technologies.
Introducing Govurn
Govurn, a company from Seattle, Washington, has recognized this widespread problem and sought to revolutionize governance and elections as we know it through blockchain. Succinctly, Govurn is a comprehensive decision management company that provides products and services for organizations who need to collect information and opinions to derive outcomes. This includes research on features including voting, polling, and broad corporate governance in general. Moreover, they also provide end to end white glove service for elections right from the technology platform all the way to the election event done by a third party administrator, who would be their client. Govurn accomplishes this with a highly configurable toolset using best practices like Sociocracy, Liquid Democracy, staking, and quadratic voting. Governance bylaws can be programmed directly into the system to leverage features for collaboration and decision making activities such as elections, voting, polling, and surveys.
During the recently concluded RCon3 Conference held in Berlin, CryptoTicker had the opportunity to sit down with Govurn CEO, Karl Kurrle and CTO Chris Hancock. RCon3 revolved around the RChain Proof of Stake consensus platform, thus bringing together network validators, dApp developers, investors, and entrepreneurs to participate in the launch of the RChain testnet.
Govurn’s story
Govurn was formed by five co-founders who are extremely passionate about exploring blockchain governance and creating a fully-functional governance platform developed by a renowned team of developers and ideators. The Govurn team is comprised of seasoned veterans bringing diverse executive experience from technology, elections and voting, and nonprofit sectors. Karl Kurrle has over 20 years of experience serving in executive and strategic technology leadership roles for organizations across various industries and started working on Govurn with his team of co-founders and developers last year. Chris Hancock also has a long history in the technology field including tenure at Microsoft before building a successful technology-consulting firm.
CryptoTicker: What is the Govurn’s company roadmap?
Karl: Govurn is primarily a blockchain based services organization. We are focusing on creating solutions that help organizations with governance. An election includes a multitude of steps and is not just restricted to voting, but also the creation of the voting conditions mutually agreed upon by the involved parties.
We will first focus on perfecting each aspect of the election process through the use of blockchain which would include voting, rules engines, governance, messaging, instant polling, and voter interaction. We are interested in implementing an RChain based solution for our first deliverable. Our next step would be to work on the broader governance platform after building the necessary infrastructure for it such that it can be easily applied and adopted by international markets.
CryptoTicker: How will Govurn be affected by prevailing cryptocurrency regulations in different parts of the World?
Chris: Govurn will not be affected by cryptocurrency restrictions because the cryptocurrency backend is separate and integrated within their own platform. Govurn’s clients would realize that blockchain technologies are behind their governance security features. In our experience, clients generally prefer not to fully consume the inner workings of a tokenized system due to its complexity but have transparency into the technology if desired. Thus, Govurn would not be affected by any cryptocurrency regulations in place as it primarily offers full technical Services for integration of decision management software leveraging the Govurn Platform and the Netvote Protocol.
CryptoTicker: How will Govurn gain a competitive advantage over this rapidly developing governance industry?
Karl: There are several solutions to governance out there, but all of them are primarily technology focused. They are primarily focused on solving symptoms and not the root cause of the problems in the industry. These solutions have issues with voting because of the fact that the information uploaded into the blockchain could be inaccurate and has disparate data from disconnected channels areas like collaboration and voting not being combined with broader sentiment and reoccurring events to provide useful data for actionable outcomes and auditability. One of Govurn’s co-founder, John Bodin, has deep election experience and is well-versed in the nuances of governance. Our solutions would be based on the nuances of negotiation, authority, privacy, ballots, etc while maintaining the strengths of a foolproof technology backend. The average citizen would be able to take their vote and place it on the blockchain, thus making the voting process completely reputable, confident, and free from external alterations. At Govurn, we are also concerned about the applicability of practical concerns around the election process by bridging the gap between the current state and the future of elections.
Chris: We have about a dozen electoral competitors in the United States that can run full election processes. However, there are ongoing concerns about electronic voting because of the implicit push for integrating paper ballots with electronic voting. Blockchain also gives better KYC (Know Your Customer) because paper audits pose the inherent issue of ensuring a voter’s ballot is related to their actual vote whereas blockchain transactions are recorded on immutable ledgers. Finally, we will be announcing several upcoming partnerships both in the technology level as well as for outreach that would help us establish competitive advantage within this industry and to further accelerate our research and development. Blockchain governance systems are still at the infancy of its evolution, and we at Govurn are certain that we can effectively solve its underlying issues to make it applicable to various governance requirements.
Blockchain governance systems are still at the infancy of its evolution, and we at Govurn are certain that we can effectively solve its underlying issues to make it applicable to various governance requirements. Govurn has a grand vision for the future of democracy through elections and governance. Bottom line is that technology and society at large desperately needs a comprehensive solution for these critical activities
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Steemit, and join our Telegram channel for the latest blockchain and cryptocurrency news.
