Summer 2020 Is Funding Season for Open-Source Bitcoin Development

Nearly half a dozen companies have announced new grants for open-source bitcoin contributors and projects since the coronavirus crisis began, from exchanges such as Kraken and OKCoin to the Human Rights Foundation. Grants are generally around $150,000 each.

Now Wasabi Wallet-maker zkSNACKs Ltd announced on Thursday it is joining the cohort by donating 1 bitcoin to the HRF’s Bitcoin Development Fund. 

The privacy startup released a statement, saying, “We understand the concern for privacy in Bitcoin’s blockchain and how it can be used to surveil and oppress.” As such, the startup is keen to see this bitcoin used to fund privacy tech development.

“Hopefully, HRF’s fund can inspire other organizations in the non-profit and academic space to support Bitcoin research and software development,” HRF executive Alex Gladstein said in a press statement. 

Read more: Human Rights Foundation Funds Bitcoin Privacy Tools Despite ‘Coin Mixing’ Legal Stigma

Meanwhile, Jack Dorsey’s Square Crypto published an open call for designer grants – an anomaly among developer-focused grant programs. 

"Square Crypto hopes to jumpstart the bitcoin design community with at least half a dozen designer grants," Square Crypto lead Steve Lee said in an email to CoinDesk. "Projects can span from user experience research to systems design to graphic design."

Square Crypto’s blog post also said multiple grants will go to those who “contribute to a bitcoin design guide, an open-source project intended to simplify designing for bitcoin applications.”

The skunkworks unit within the publicly traded payments firm followed up with a teaser tweet on Thursday, saying: “We’ll announce more grants in the next month than we have in the last year.”

Square Crypto granted $100,000 to BTCPay Server last fall.