Research and development of blockchain technologies pioneer nChain today announced the appointment of Bitcoin Foundation Executive Director Jon Matonis as its new Vice President of Corporate Strategy.

In this position, Matonis will support nChain’s business growth by developing commercial relationships, and evaluating opportunities for strategic investments and acquisitions.

Jon is also a founding director of the Bitcoin Foundation which served as the industry’s first nonprofit trade association originally chartered to provide financial compensation for voluntary protocol code developers and to promote the vision of Bitcoin worldwide.

His career has also included senior roles with Sumitomo Bank, VISA International, VeriSign, and Hushmail.

Additionally, Matonis created the first and leading general price index for Bitcoin known as the Bitcoin Price Index (BPI), hosted the largest-ever Bitcoin/blockchain conference to date in Amsterdam during 2014, and enlisted seven regional chapter offices to the Bitcoin Foundation from countries such as France, Germany, and Bangladesh.

Arthur Davis, Director of nChain Holdings Limited, comments:

“Jon was immediately attractive to nChain. During his notable career, he has consistently led the integration of financial services and cryptography. His work has included foreign currency trading for Visa International, financial platform sales for RSA’s VeriSign – securing its first $5 million in revenue – and end-to-end encrypted messaging for Hush Communications where as CEO he recruited PGP’s Phil Zimmermann as Hushmail’s Chief Cryptographer. Jon’s philosophy for the Bitcoin protocol and network is fully in line with nChain’s vision of on-chain scalability with decentralization, advanced native scripting for the construction of smart contracts, and a dedicated move away from monolithic software. We are excited to have Jon’s deep industry experience on our team, and look forward to working with him to achieve our vision for the Bitcoin blockchain.”

Bitcoin is the dominant value transfer protocol. The collective computing power directed to its network is now 3.7 exahashes-per-second and growing, making the Bitcoin blockchain best suited to directly enable and facilitate nChain’s transformative vision.

In accepting the new management team position, Matonis comments:

“The resources and funding in place at nChain provide a unique opportunity to reshape the existing landscape of Bitcoin protocol influencers. It is imperative that we move towards a status quo where the actual protocol standard is separated from its primary reference implementation, similar to the existing architecture of the Linux kernel and its low-level abstraction layer.”

In line with this view, nChain advocates for the formation of a neutral standards organization to coordinate and manage the Bitcoin protocol and technical standards which in the long-term will result in more robust software design and a flourishing of compatible implementations.

Last month, nChain and a group of affiliated companies were acquired by High Tech Private Equity Fund SICAV plc, an EU regulated investment fund managed by Accuro Fund Solutions. Although undisclosed, Arthur Davis said the transaction value is thought to be the largest worldwide to date in blockchain technology research.