Arthur Hayes' Maelstrom launches bitcoin developer grant program

Maelstrom, the crypto venture capital led by BitMEX Co-founder Arthur Hayes, today unveiled its grant program to support Bitcoin BTC +4.19% developers.

“Maelstrom, like other companies in the space, indirectly relies on the work of open-source Bitcoin developers,” the company said on its website . “We are therefore keen to give back and donate to the Bitcoin technology, on which the crypto ecosystem depends.”

The website says the grant program aims to help boost Bitcoin’s technical development as well as its resilience, scalability, censorship resistance and privacy. 

The amount of grants range from $50,000 to a maximum of $150,000 per applicant, and will be issued across 12 months in monthly installments in BTC, USDC or USDT. Recipients are expected to contribute to Bitcoin's technical development, potentially through pull requests or code reviews for the Bitcoin Core software project, the website said.

Maelstrom said applications need to be submitted before Aug. 25, and grants are scheduled to be awarded in the third or fourth quarter of this year.

The venture capital run by Hayes’ family office makes venture-stage investments between $100,000 to $250,000 in various early stage DeFi projects, according to its website. Its recent investments include modular network project Elixir, synthetic dollar protocol Ethena and bitcoin trading app Oyl.

In June, Hayes, as chief investment officer of Maelstrom, joined blockchain data infrastructure startup Covalent as its strategic advisor.