Two Bitcoin developers – Chris Coverdale and Rene Pickhardt – have been selected to receive funding from BitMEX’s Open Source Developer Grant program.
- Both Coverdale and Pickhardt will receive eight-month grants, with funding lasting until May 2022, worth $33,333 each.
- BitMEX’s announcement of the grant awards describes its developer grant program as “interim funding” meant to help part-time developers transition out of employment or education into full-time development work.
- BitMEX is one of several crypto companies including Gemini, OKCoin, Square, and Marathon Digital Holdings to fund Bitcoin developers.
- Coverdale’s work will focus on building an implementation of the Stratum V2 bitcoin mining pool protocol, which he has been working on since February.
- Pickhardt, a former member of the German Pirate Party, will focus his development work on improving the Lightning Network, a layer 2 payment protocol built on top of Bitcoin.
- With the addition of Coverdale and Pickhardt, BitMEX is currently supporting six Bitcoin developers, including Michael Ford, Calvin Kim, and Sjors Provoost. Over the past two years, BitMEX has handed out at total of $1.5 million in open source development grants.
Read more: BitMEX, Human Rights Foundation Award Bitcoin Developer Grants Worth $150K
