Coinbase recently decided to help contribute to the Bitcoin Core development by offering grants to two developers — Joao Barbosa, and an anonymous developer known only as 0xB10C.
Who did Coinbase choose to support?
The two developers are already well-known in crypto circles. Barbosa actually used to receive funding from a crypto mining giant, Bitmain. Unfortunately, Bitmain decided to stop providing its support, which is when Coinbase decided to step up and offer an alternative with its first-ever developer grant.
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Coinbase was already familiar with Barbosa’s past work. Now, the largest US exchange decided to sponsor his work on improving the Bitcoin Core’s user interface, and make it easier for users to access it.
As for the other developer, 0xB10C, he has been working on transparency tools for Bitcoin’s blockchain. This developer was already known throughout the crypto community for its tools such as transactionfee.info and mempool.observer.
Both tools are open-source, and they allow insight into Bitcoin’s public statistics and on-chain data. Another thing that this developer is known for is code review, as well as for publishing write-ups regarding BTC development.
The developers’ proposals were quickly approved by a committee consisting of five members — Anthony Towns, Felix Weis, Carla Kirk-Cohen, Dan Boneh, and Amiti Uttarwar.
Details of the deal remain vague
From what is known of Coinbase’s deal, the exchange will sponsor the two developers’ Bitcoin-related work for the entirety of 2021. Developers will be able to choose whether they want payments in Bitcoin (BTC) or US dollars.
The only thing that still remains unknown is how much is the exchange going to grant, as the amount was never disclosed by any of the involved parties.
It is also worth noting that there are other entities, apart from Coinbase, who are preparing to offer grants to open-source software developers, including BitMEX, Square, and Kraken.
