Bitcoin Community Member Develops Funding Tracker

The user aims to bring additional transparency to the world of crypto funding. Due to the decentralized nature of Bitcoin, keeping track of the different funding projects is complex. By making development funding more accessible, the tracker could attract interest from open-source developers. The tracker may be a step forward in the quest to bring crypto into the mainstream.

Finding Bitcoin Funding

On July 12, Polylunar outlined in a blog post the launch of its Bitcoin Grants Tracker. The post presents the reasoning behind the tracker but also lays out development for future grants.

#Bitcoin Grants Tracker Update – added the following grants:

– @jlppfeffer funding @mitDCI
– @jlppfeffer funding Sam Dobson aka @meshcollider
– @milessuter funding Wladimir van der Laan aka @orionwl and Cory Fieldshttps://t.co/5qxj5uh4CT

Outstanding stuff, DCI and John! pic.twitter.com/jixdjEk9Rn

— Polylunar 🐝 🍵 🌊 (@Polylunar_) July 19, 2020

Many cryptocurrencies launched ICOs or received large sums of private funding. Bitcoin didn’t. Since its launch in 2009, a small group of developers maintains all of its software. Bitcoin is open-source and decentralized by design. The downside to decentralization is, of course, that no one is in charge of funding.

The Advantages of Decentralization

Only a few developers volunteer to work on Bitcoin’s improvements, and just a handful of groups fund Bitcoin Core development. Some of the most well-known include Chaincode, Blockstream, MIT DCI, Square Crypto, Xapo, BitMEX, and OKCoin, among others.

Lack of funding can be a major barrier to the continued development of Bitcoin’s code. Cryptocurrency development holds a certain appeal, however, developers still need to put food on the table. The Bitcoin Grants Tracker may help with this, as now both funders and developers have a dedicated place to find each other. Polylunar explains:

“Initially I was solely interested in finding out how all these great OSS projects like BtcPayServer, Electrum, Wasabi, Samourai, etc. can sustain themselves. Upon finding some with interesting business models that allow them to support themselves, I noticed that there is an ever-increasing amount of funding activity going on but distributed all over Twitter and blogs.”

The Grants Tracker is one of a growing number of initiatives in the decentralized funding space. Just recently, BeInCrypto reported that the Human Rights Foundation had revealed more recipients of the latest development fund.

New Money Flows Attract More Devs

Although not all funding is made public, estimates put donations to developers at more than $1 million. Thanks to the Grants Tracker, the public now has some visibility of the projects funded. During 2020, several open-source developers will receive full salaries as they work on the world’s most popular cryptocurrency.

Our first Square Crypto Design Grant goes to Christoph Ono (@GBKS). Christoph will bring structure (albeit the decentralized kind) to the bitcoin design community that we announced last week. As of this tweet, that community has 292 members on Slack. Good luck, buddy 🤣

— Square Crypto (@sqcrypto) July 1, 2020

The grants vary with their targets. Some want to further Bitcoin’s capabilities as a medium of exchange, while others prefer to finance the designers behind the alpha crypto. Some even argue that the Bitcoin Grants Tracker is a textbook example of decentralization: members of an open-source community dedicating their time and energy to improving transparency.