HRF Bitcoin Development Fund Grants $325,000 to 12 Projects on 5 Continents

NEW YORK (December 20, 2022) — The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is pleased to announce its latest round of gifts from its Bitcoin Development Fund, focusing on core development, building worldwide communities, improving privacy technology, and global education. Areas of focus include Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and South Asia.

• $50,000 to Gleb Naumenko for his work on Bitcoin Core and in the Bitcoin ecosystem at large. From inside Ukraine, earlier this year Gleb released Coinpool, a concept for scaling Bitcoin. Gleb will use funding to continue his work on covenants, as well as conducting research on SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT and Eltoo as potential Bitcoin scaling solutions. He continues to contribute to Bitcoin Core, notably in the areas of security, privacy, and scalability.

• $50,000 to Furszy for his work on Bitcoin Core. Furszy will continue working on enhancing Bitcoin Core’s software stability, performance and security by reviewing the sources and PRs, finding and fixing bugs, proposing performance and code structural improvements, and adding further test coverage and value to public discussions.

• $25,000 to Bitcoin4India to support their grassroots community building and education initiatives in India. Funding will support Bitcoin4India in local and university meetups; the Satoshi Beach Hut which provides a free coworking space for Bitcoiners in Goa; supporting local artisans and educating them about Bitcoin; translation into Indian languages; and bringing more Indian developers into the Bitcoin ecosystem.

• $25,000 to Bitcoin Mountain for building Bitcoin circular communities in Cameroon. Funding will support Bitcoin Mountain as the initiative organizes Bitcoin trainings, meetups, hangouts and conferences. Bitcoin Mountain is an inspiring example of a powerful and peaceful community growing in a place known for conflict.

• $25,000 to the We Are All Satoshi project, an Africa-based organization that aims to identify teenage women and men from all religious backgrounds interested in tech and help steer them to contributing to Bitcoin. Funding will allow WAAS to develop their educational curriculum, organize local support networks, and sponsor competitions, projects, and mentorship for local community members.

•  $25,000 to Tor relay operator associations to support increased network reliability and performance, as recommended by the Tor Project. Funding will allow relay operator associations to deploy nodes that improve the stability and reliability of onion services and increase network robustness against DOS attacks. Tor is vital to human rights activists, as well as Bitcoin and Lightning nodes that use onion services.

• $25,000 to Bitcoin Magazine Ukraine to support Bitcoin meetups in Kiev. Despite the ongoing war, these meetups are now happening on a regular basis. Funding will allow the further growth of Bitcoin communities in Ukraine, and will support the release of the first print edition of Bitcoin Magazine Ukraine.

• $25,000 to Dusty for his work on Lightning Splicing. Splicing allows nodes to resize Lightning channels, allowing Bitcoin wallets to have “one balance” where the wallet could pay to both legacy on chain destinations as well as make payments on Lightning. Lightning Splicing has the potential to dramatically improve the user experience on the Lightning Network.

• $25,000 to Raseef 22 to support Raseef22’s coverage of the social impact of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in the Middle East. Raseef22 is the leading independent pan Arab media covering the 22 Arab countries. Published from Beirut since 2013, its 40 journalists work from the 4 corners of the world to bring relevant coverage of life in the Arabic speaking world, with a focus on freedoms, democracy and human rights.

• $25,000 to New Belarus, a digital democracy platform that lays the foundation for the democratic social, economic, and political changes in Belarus. New Belarus aims to provide the framework for activating direct and representative democracy and preparing a new generation of politicians and democracy-savvy citizens. Programming will include building a bitcoin-based financial infrastructure, providing Belarusians access to financial security and economic opportunity.

• $15,000 in travel grants to support students, activists, and developers at the Africa Bitcoin Conference, which took place on December 5-7 in Ghana. Funding supported flights and accommodations, allowing women and men from across Africa to present new ideas, meet each other, and open dialogues with potential supporters with the goal of increasing adoption on the continent.

• $10,000 to support bitcoin ++, a Bitcoin developer conference focused on on-chain privacy that took place in Mexico City.  Funding supported long-form lectures and workshops, allowing a range of experts and builders across the privacy space to come talk about their projects and get users on-boarded to using them.

Over the past two years HRF has allocated more than $1.8 million in BTC and USD to more than 60 developers, educators, and open-source initiatives across the world. HRF continues to raise support for the Bitcoin Development Fund, with the next round of gifts to be announced in February 2023.

HRF is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowable by law. Gifts can be made at HRF.org/DevFund, while proposals for support can be submitted to [email protected].

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.