The Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) in part with the MIT Media Lab has announced in a blog post that a $900,000 Bitcoin Developer fund has been started to help fund independent research of Bitcoin associated technology.
Appropriately, the fund has a specific wallet set up to accept funding donations in the form of Bitcoin as well. The fund will remain open for contribution for the foreseeable future as long as a need for providing a home for Bitcoin developers is needed.
One of the most remarkable benefits of this fund is the overall positive impact that it could have on Bitcoin as a whole, as well as potentially the entire cryptocurrency and blockchain technology space. DCI as an organization is completely agnostic when it comes to the block size debate and Classic vs. Core, so hopefully the best findings in regards to all aspects of the technology will be discovered. The projects developed with these funds within DCI will be under the MIT Licensing agreement and also may be released under a permissive use license.
Brian Forde , Director of the Digital Currency Initiative wrote in the post that the funds will support salaries, travel and development of overall protocol efforts associated with the Bitcoin ecosystem, not the administrative costs of DCI.
Companies that have contributed to this fund include BitFury, Bitmain, Chain, Circle and Nasdaq as well as individually Jim Breyer, Jim Pallotta, Jeff Tarrant, Reid Hoffman and Fred Wilson.
As unrestricted gifts, the funds will support Bitcoin protocol development, however the donors or their affiliations won’t be allowed to influence the developers.
This fund doesn’t change anything in the way of operations for the three Bitcoin core developers originally associated with the DCI; Cory Fields, Gavin Andresen and Wladimir van der Laan.
While DCI will consider sponsoring additional developers, Forde encourages other […]
