NEW YORK (September 26, 2023) — The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is pleased to announce its latest round of gifts from the Bitcoin Development Fund. HRF’s latest batch of 15 grants focus on global education, Bitcoin Core, DLCs on lightning, e-cash, and providing scholarships to developers from authoritarian regimes to be able to participate and present at industry conferences. Key areas of focus include Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.
Grants include:
• $50,000 to Furszy for his work on Bitcoin Core, where he is a top 10 contributor. Funding will support his essential contributions to enhancing Bitcoin Core’s software stability, performance and security by reviewing PRs; fixing bugs; proposing performance and code improvements; and adding further value to public discussions.
• $50,000 to Summer of Bitcoin to support their summer fellowship program. Summer of Bitcoin is a global, online summer internship program focused on introducing university students to bitcoin open-source development and design. The 2023 program featured more than 10,000 applicants from more than 70 countries. Learn more about the summer program and apply here.
• $50,000 to Jarol Rodriguez for his work on Bitcoin Core. Jarol will use funding to review PRs and fix bugs in Bitcoin Core; expand developer education; improve the Bitcoin Core App, a free and open-source project considered to be the reference implementation of a bitcoin node; and help make it possible to run a Bitcoin Core node on a mobile phone.
• $50,000 to Vinteum for their work on expanding open source Bitcoin work in Latin America and Brazil. Vinteum will use funding to support Bitcoin Core developers in Latin America, foster Bitcoin communities, and build a Bitcoin Core developer pipeline education program in Latin America.
• $50,000 to Gee Deer for his work on lightning native stablecoins and Bitcoin Core. Gee’s proposed stablecoin will use Discreet Log Contracts to reduce counterparty risk and maximize decentralization. Gee will also be working on Bitcoin Core with developer support, code review and testing.
• $50,000 to the Kawaakibi Foundation to build a MENA Bitcoin Hub. The MENA Bitcoin HUB will educate activists, journalists and nonprofits on using Bitcoin to transact freely, receive international donations and hold their money securely and privately to help free one of the most authoritarian regions in the world.
• $50,000 to Justin Moeller for his work on Fedimint. Justin will focus on implementing a database migration mechanism to allow guardians to upgrade their Fedimint servers seamlessly. He will also be investigating performance bottlenecks of Fedimint and potentially identify best practices for how to spend ecash.
• $25,000 to D++ for her international educational initiatives and work on FOSS projects. D++ will use funds to do international education by speaking and giving workshops at conferences in the Global South, running a free Bitcoin bootcamp, and maintenance of Bitcoin Core and FOSS Projects.
• $25,000 to Bitcoin Ekasi for their efforts to build a circular Bitcoin economy in South Africa. Funds will support the onboarding of new local businesses to Bitcoin, paying the salaries of coaches, teachers, and lifeguards, and the operation of a skill development center to teach practical skills and Bitcoin knowledge to the local community. HRF expects Bitcoin Ekasi to be emulated by other communities across Africa in the coming years.
• $25,000 to Amiti Uttarwar for her work on Bitcoin mentorship, improving peer-to-peer security, and Bitcoin education. Funds will support Amiti as she mentors Bitcoin Core contributors to help them achieve their full potential, works to increase the security and privacy of the Bitcoin network, and the creation of new and accessible Bitcoin educational material
• $25,000 to Ben Perrin for international Bitcoin education. Ben is a Bitcoin educator and host of the BTC Sessions on Youtube where he helps people understand Bitcoin. Funding will allow Ben to create educational materials geared towards teaching dissidents how to safely use Bitcoin, as well as conduct in-person and virtual trainings and workshops teaching NGOs how to use Bitcoin safely and securely.
• $25,000 to La Librería de Satoshi (Library of Satoshi) for their work to make technical education accessible to as many Spanish-speakers as possible. La Librería de Satoshi will use funding to create Bitcoin and lightning courses, enabling Spanish developers to become Bitcoin Core Contributors, Bitcoin technical Educators, developer advocates and entrepreneurs in the ecosystem.
• $10,000 in travel grants to three conferences to help them fund the participation of Bitcoin developers from difficult political climates:
○TabConf, a technical Bitcoin conference that took place in Atlanta Georgia on September 6-9
○Satsconf, the largest Bitcoin conference in Brazil taking place in Sao Paulo, Brazil from November 2-5
○Bitcoin++, a Bitcoin developer conference focused on Nix and software reproducibility taking place in Berlin, Germany from October 6-7.
HRF is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowable by law. Gifts can be made at HRF.org/DevFund, and proposals for support can be submitted to dev.fund@hrf.org.
Follow @HRF on Twitter for more updates on this project and all of our other programs designed to promote freedom and human rights around the world.