M3 is the fully decentralized Factom protocol. The long-term goal is to have 65 (or more) independent parties running the actual protocol on a day-to-day basis. The immediate goal is to have a significant number of parties running the Factom protocol, where no one party has majority control, and the protocol itself is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus algorithm.

We are pleased to formally announce we are starting the M3 rollout this month. Please see the following timeline for important dates.

March 15 M3 Roadmap released March 16 Governance proposals released on Factom blog March 19 M3 Town Hall on Reddit 7-9 a.m. CT / 1-3 p.m. UTC March 26 Last day for governance proposals from the community March 20 & 27 M3 Candidate Releases (Test Net) TBD M3 Virtual Conferences (as needed) By March 31 M3 Virtual Convention to ratify Governance April 3, 10 & 17 M3 Candidate Releases (Test Net) TBD Authority Set finalized Mid to late April M3 goes live

An important first step in achieving M3 is establishing governance proposals. Our team is working on several proposals that we would like the community to review and provide feedback on. We will announce our proposals for review on our blog tomorrow.

Once we post our M3 governance proposals, we would like the Factom Community to review these proposals, provide feedback, and engage in open dialogue during the M3 Town Hall. The Town Hall will be held on Reddit on Monday, March 19th from 7-9 a.m. CST, 13:00-15:00 UTC. We will provide a link to the Reddit thread in our next post. The community will then have an opportunity to submit alternatives and refinements through March 26.

By the end of March, we intend to approve and ratify the governance for the Factom protocol with the Factom community.

To our dedicated community, thank you for your continued support of the Factom protocol, and we look forward to achieving M3 with your help.