Arthur Hayes Maelstrom Announces Bitcoin Funding Program Up To $250K Per Developer
The Arthur Hayes Maelstrom Fund has announced a new bitcoin grant program to advance the technical development of the world's first blockchain network.
Maelstrom's new Bitcoin (BTC) grant program offers developers funding ranging from $50,000 to $150,000 per 12-month period, with grant stacks of up to $250,000 per developer.
The program aims to give back to Bitcoin open source developers and further promote the growth of the network. According to the announcement:
“The goal of the program is to support Bitcoin's technical development and improve its resilience, scalability, censorship resistance and privacy features. We have the capacity to support Bitcoin developers and are committed to an open and transparent grant process.”
Maelstrom is a family office fund that invests in decentralized technologies. It is headed by CIO Arthur Hayes.
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Bitcoin gifts can be given as soon as Q3.
Talent is expected to contribute to Bitcoin's technical development, including pull requests or review work for the Bitcoin Core software project.
According to the announcement, grants will be provided for 12 months in Bitcoin, Circle's USD Coin (USDC) and Tether USD (USDT).
They are expected to make grants to developers in the third or fourth quarter of 2024. Developers can submit their support applications to Maelstrom until August 25th.
Interest in Bitcoin development has increased again this year, primarily due to renewed interest in the United States for Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and the 2024 Bitcoin halving that occurred in April.
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More innovation for Bitcoin-native DeFi?
Maelstrom's grant program could lead to further innovation in Bitcoin-native decentralized finance (DeFi), also known as Bitcoin DeFi or BTCFi.
Bitcoin DeFi is a broad developer movement that aims to add more utility to the Bitcoin network. Interest in Bitcoin DeFi was sparked by the debut of Runes, a new protocol for issuing hash tokens on the Bitcoin network, on April 20 at half-day.
Rich Runes, a core DAO contributor building Bitcoin DeFi solutions, said the emergence of Runes and Bitcoin DeFi came from a desire to add more utility to the world's most secure blockchain network. Reigns told Cointelegraph:
“[Bitcoin] What started out as a peer-to-peer electronic money system then evolved further into store value and now protects $1.5 trillion in assets. Over the past year and a half we have seen this demand for the original Bitcoin with the rise of Ordinals, the addition of token protocols such as BRC 20s and now Runes.
However, Runes may just be a stepping stone for Bitcoin DeFi as we see more new token levels built on the Bitcoin network.
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