Crypto exchange Coinbase has announced that, as part of its Crypto Community Fund, it “plans to sponsor at least two Bitcoin developers, who contribute directly to the Bitcoin Core codebase or closely associated Bitcoin projects.”
According to Coinbase’s blog post, its Crypto Community Fund “aims to grow and improve the entire crypto industry, while making it simpler to use and more secure for everyone.”
It then pointed out that the open source community’s support for Bitcoin development is “critical”, and that so far this effort has been supported via “donations from industry organizations and academic institutions.” Coinbase want to “similarly support developers who are committed to growing and maintaining the Bitcoin ecosystem.”
Anyone can apply for a grant or nominate a Bitcoin core developer via the following form: “Crypto Community Fund: Bitcoin Developer Grants“
Coinbase says these are a few examples of Bitcoin projects it would consider supporting:
- “Direct contributions to Bitcoin Core (e.g., improving testing, fuzzing, bug fixes, improvements)”
- “Significant code and/or Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) review”
- “Bitcoin Core libraries and tools (e.g., libsecp256k1)”
One of the first people to applaud Coinbase’s announcement was Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey:
It is worth noting that on 20 March 2019, Bitcoin advocate Dorsey announced, Square Crypto, the division of payments solutions provider Square that is focused on open source Bitcoin development:
In the tweets that followed, Dorsey explained the motivation for creating this new team:
- “This will be Square’s first open source initiative independent of our business objectives. These folks will focus entirely on what’s best for the crypto community and individual economic empowerment, not on Square’s commercial interests. All resulting work will be open and free.”
- “Square has taken a lot from the open source community to get us here. We haven’t given enough back. This is a small way to give back, and one that’s aligned with our broader interests: a more accessible global financial system for the internet.”
Then, on 20 August 2019, Square Crypto announced that it had hired legendary Bitcoin core developer Matt Corallo.