Arthur Hayes’s Bitcoin Developer Grant Program

Crypto trader Arthur Hayes is making waves in the Bitcoin community with his new grant program aimed at funding Bitcoin Core development. Hayes, the co-founder of BitMEX, is using his family office’s crypto investment firm, Maelstrom, to support the development of the foundational Bitcoin software.

The grant program, announced on Twitter by Hayes himself, will provide funding to individual developers working on Bitcoin Core, the most widely implemented Bitcoin software client. The program will focus on key areas such as resilience, scalability, censorship resistance, and privacy characteristics.

Unlike other crypto projects that have conducted formal fundraising rounds, Bitcoin has never had a traditional raise to fund its development. This lack of funding has left the protocol slower to adopt new technology and in need of basic software maintenance.

Hayes and Maelstrom are stepping in to fill this gap by offering grants ranging from $50,000 to $150,000 to individual developers. The grants will be distributed in twelve monthly payments in BTC, USDC, or USDT, with a cap of $250,000 per year for grant stacking.

Other prominent figures in the crypto community, such as Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and Bitcoin ETF sponsors Bitwise and VanEck, have also provided funding for Bitcoin development in recent years. However, some, like MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, have expressed concerns about providing unlimited funding without a targeted focus.

Hayes’s grant program represents a significant investment in the future of Bitcoin development and could help drive innovation and growth within the crypto ecosystem. Developers interested in applying for a grant can do so through the Maelstrom website.