Coinbase will sponsor two Bitcoin Core developers with first Crypto Community Fund grants

Posted on by

By Manish Gupta, EVP of Engineering

As part of our Crypto Community Fund, Coinbase plans to sponsor at least two Bitcoin developers, who contribute directly to the Bitcoin Core codebase or closely associated Bitcoin projects. We are beginning our search for grant recipients starting today.

We believe helping to connect and grow the cryptoeconomy is essential to building an open financial system for the world. Our Crypto Community Fund aims to grow and improve the entire crypto industry, while making it simpler to use and more secure for everyone. If successful, we intend to expand the program to other types of projects and crypto communities.

Unlike most cryptocurrency projects, Bitcoin launched without a fundraise, while bootstrapping an entire industry. The open source community has provided critical support for Bitcoin development, with some support from donations from industry organizations and academic institutions. Our goal is to similarly support developers who are committed to growing and maintaining the Bitcoin ecosystem.

If you’d like to apply or nominate a Bitcoin core developer to be sponsored, please fill out this form. Proposals will be shortlisted by current Bitcoin Core developers and important community members, with Coinbase making the final decision. For Bitcoin projects, our advisory board includes Dan Boneh, Carla Kirk-Cohen, Anthony Towns, Amiti Uttarwar, Felix Weis.

We’re excited to fund projects nearly anywhere in the world. While we aim to focus on year-long developer grants, we also encourage people or teams with shorter projects in mind to apply. If successful, we hope to grow the crypto community fund over time.

Example projects we will consider supporting:

  • Direct contributions to Bitcoin Core (e.g., improving testing, fuzzing, bug fixes, improvements)
  • Significant code and/or Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) review
  • Contributor tooling (e.g., bitcoinacks.com, which is open source)
  • Bitcoin Core libraries and tools (e.g., libsecp256k1)
  • Improvement to testing (e.g., fuzz testing, functional tests)

We encourage all Bitcoin developers and prospective Bitcoin developers to apply for the first grants from the Crypto Community Fund. To apply, please fill out this form.

Coinbase will sponsor two Bitcoin Core developers with first Crypto Community Fund grants was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.