Over the past two years, HRF has awarded more than $1.2 million in grants to more than 30 developers and educators around the world. The Q2 2022 round focuses on Bitcoin-related projects. It covers software and community development, design, translation and monitoring. The Human Rights Foundation will award a total of 5 BTC in the final round of donations from its Bitcoin Development Fund.
Bitcoin and Lightning Developers Honored
The Africa Bitcoin Conference will receive the largest gift: 1 BTC. The 100 million satoshis will help support Bitcoin developers and educators on the continent. They will be able to present new ideas and hold networking events and discussions with local businesses.
The first major Bitcoin conference to take place in Africa since 2019 will be organized with this donation. A team led by Togolese human rights lawyer Farida Nabourema and Senegalese engineer Fodé Diop will handle the organization.
While only this project will receive a full bitcoin, several initiatives will be supported with half a BTC. Venezuelan Bitcoin developer Francisco Calderon will receive 50 million satoshis to continue working on lnp2pbot. This project is a peer-to-peer (P2P) bot for Telegram that allows users to exchange BTC using the Lightning Network.
In another grant related to the Lightning Network, researcher Rene Pickhardt will receive the same amount for his open source work. He is indeed a veteran developer on Bitcoin’s second layer network. Pickhardt has been a major contributor to the Lightning network. He has worked on education, research and identifying security vulnerabilities. This funding will support his continued dedication to the ecosystem.
Ruben Somsen and Dhruv Mehta will also receive a combined 50 million satoshis for their work on spacechains. A spacechain is a Bitcoin sidechain. Any user can compete to add a hash in the recent statechain block within a transaction in the Bitcoin blockchain. Somsen and Mehta’s work forms the basis of a framework that allows anyone to create their own spacechain.
But not only…
In addition to developers, media will also receive funding. HRF will partner with Paxful to offer three media outlets from around the world half a BTC each. The goal? To help them expand their coverage of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency adoption. The rise of the central bank’s digital currency (MNBC) and government targeting of dissidents via the banking system will also be featured. Recipients include Cuba’s El Toque, South Africa’s The Daily Maverick and Myanmar’s Democratic Voice of Burma.
The final recipient of 0.5 BTC will be Netblocks. HRF said it would fund the Global Internet Monitor to study the impact of government restrictions on the Bitcoin protocol. This will also be used to develop the surrounding mechanisms that facilitate access to the digital currency. The grant is intended to help Netblocks continue to work at the intersection of digital rights, cybersecurity and Internet governance. This will allow Netblocks to expand its public interest research and reporting to cover emerging threats to connectivity. Indeed, these have a major impact on the global Bitcoin network.
Paulo Sacramento, meanwhile, will receive a quarter of BTC to work on the Bitcoin Design Guide. This project aims to make Bitcoin applications more intuitive and accessible. Sacramento will update the “Getting to Know Your Users” page of the guide.
Finally, Bitcoin Pakistan will also receive 0.25 BTC to help increase the availability of Bitcoin content and resources in the Urdu language. Spoken by more than 60 million people worldwide, the language is one of the top 20 languages in the world. In Pakistan, the numbers on cryptocurrencies are so large, that institutions are pressing the relevant bodies to regulate them.
