Bitcoin developers to receive $70,000 grants from the Human Rights Foundation

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) has announced the allocation of $70,000 from its developers support fund, aimed at enhancing Bitcoin’s resilience, privacy and decentralisation.

New gifts from @HRF‘s Bitcoin dev fund!

—@jesseposner for his work on DLCs + multi-sig
—@MuunWallet for their open source Bitcoin/Lightning wallet
—@J9Roem for her outstanding privacy newsletter
—@BlockchainComns for Bitcoin «activist» internships

🚀https://t.co/rXA9dr8nDm

— Alex Gladstein (@gladstein) March 2, 2021

The grants will be distributed as follows:

• $25,000 to Jesse Pozner for his contribution to the development of multisignatures and discrete log contracts;
• $25,000 — the team behind the development of the Munn Wallet project on the Lightning Network;
• $10,000 — the bitcoin enthusiast Janine Roem, covering as a journalist the progress in improving the privacy of the first cryptocurrency;
• $10,000 — a nonprofit Blockchain Commons, creating opportunities for internships for Bitcoin activists.

Posner previously managed keys at Coinbase, and then turned to open-source technology development. HRF hopes the grant will allow him to research and implement Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signatures (FROST) after the Taproot activation. The aim is to improve privacy and give users greater control of their funds.

Schnorr signatures and Taproot technology have been included in Bitcoin’s source code

The Lightning-enabled Munn Wallet is available for Android and iOS and aims to help users self-custody their Bitcoin. The project team, led by Dario Sneidermanis, is based in Argentina.

Janine’s digest “This Month In Bitcoin Privacy” increases users’ knowledge about how to protect themselves from attackers and improve privacy in Bitcoin transactions.

Blockchain Commons, which is developing a decentralized blockchain infrastructure, will direct the grant toward launching a series of internships. Participants will contribute to software development and help HRF activists unlock Bitcoin’s opportunities. For example, setting up a wallet and adding a Bitcoin address to a personal website.

HRF launched the developers support fund in the summer of 2020.

In December, HRF’s chief strategist Alex Gladstein said that millions of people around the world rely on Bitcoin to avoid high inflation, frozen accounts, sanctions and financial isolation.

Subscribe to ForkLog news on Facebook!