Share this article
Summer 2020 Is Funding Season for Open-Source Bitcoin Development
The maker of Wasabi Wallet becomes the latest firm to support crypto coders with a 1 BTC donation to the Human Rights Foundation's Bitcoin Development Fund.
By Leigh Cuen
Updated Sep 14, 2021, 8:56 a.m. Published Jun 25, 2020, 6:54 p.m.
Nearly half a dozen companies have announced new grants for open-source bitcoin contributors and projects since the coronavirus crisis began, from exchanges such as Kraken and OKCoin to the Human Rights Foundation. Grants are generally around $150,000 each.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Now Wasabi Wallet-maker zkSNACKs Ltd announced on Thursday it is joining the cohort by donating 1 bitcoin to the HRF’s Bitcoin Development Fund.
The privacy startup released a statement, saying, “We understand the concern for privacy in Bitcoin’s blockchain and how it can be used to surveil and oppress.” As such, the startup is keen to see this bitcoin used to fund privacy tech development.
“Hopefully, HRF’s fund can inspire other organizations in the non-profit and academic space to support Bitcoin research and software development,” HRF executive Alex Gladstein said in a press statement.
Read more: Human Rights Foundation Funds Bitcoin Privacy Tools Despite ‘Coin Mixing’ Legal Stigma
Meanwhile, Jack Dorsey’s Square Crypto published an open call for designer grants – an anomaly among developer-focused grant programs.
"Square Crypto hopes to jumpstart the bitcoin design community with at least half a dozen designer grants," Square Crypto lead Steve Lee said in an email to CoinDesk. "Projects can span from user experience research to systems design to graphic design."
Square Crypto’s blog post also said multiple grants will go to those who “contribute to a bitcoin design guide, an open-source project intended to simplify designing for bitcoin applications.”
The skunkworks unit within the publicly traded payments firm followed up with a teaser tweet on Thursday, saying: “We’ll announce more grants in the next month than we have in the last year.”
Square Crypto granted $100,000 to BTCPay Server last fall.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
NFT Project Pudgy Penguins Takes Over Las Vegas Sphere in Holiday Campaign
The NFT brand’s animated segments will air on the Sphere across Christmas week, signaling the crypto company's move into real-world consumer markets.
What to know:
- Pudgy Penguins will run an ad campaign at the Las Vegas Sphere during Christmas week, one of the few crypto brands to secure a spot at the high-profile venue.
- The NFT project, which launched on Ethereum in 2021, has expanded into physical toys and digital gaming as part of a broader consumer push.
- Pudgy Penguins briefly overtook Bored Apes in floor price earlier this year and recently launched its PENGU token on Solana, now trading on major exchanges.
Top Stories
