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 will be offering developers grants between $50,000 to $150,000 on a 12-month basis, with grant stacking of up to $250,000 per individual developer.

The program aims to give back to Bitcoin open-source developers and further promote the development of the network.  According to the announcement :

“The objective of the program is to help with the technical development of Bitcoin and enhance its resilience, scalability, censorship resistance, and privacy characteristics. We have the capacity to support Bitcoin developers and are committed to an open and transparent grant process.”
Arthur Hayes’ Maelstrom announces Bitcoin grant program of up to $250K per developer image 0 Source: Arthur Hayes

Maelstrom is a family office fund investing in decentralized technologies. It is led by CIO Arthur Hayes, a popular crypto entrepreneur and the former CEO of the BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange.

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Bitcoin grants could be awarded as soon as Q3

A potential grantee will be expected to contribute to Bitcoin’s technical development, including pull requests or review work for the Bitcoin Core software project.

Grants will be issued for 12 months in Bitcoin, Circle’s USD Coin ( USDC ), and Tether USD ( USDT ), according to the announcement.

Grants are expected to be awarded to developers during the third or fourth quarter of 2024. Developers can submit their grant applications with Maelstrom until August 25.

Interest in Bitcoin development was reignited this year, first because of the newfound interest brought by the United States spot 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 grants program could potentially lead to more innovation in Bitcoin-native decentralized finance (DeFi) , also known as Bitcoin DeFi or BTCFi.

Bitcoin DeFi is a wider developer movement that aims to add more utility to the Bitcoin network. Interest in Bitcoin DeFi rose with the debut of Runes, a new protocol for issuing fungible tokens on the Bitcoin network that launched on April 20, the day of the halving.

The emergence of Runes and Bitcoin DeFi came from a desire to add more utility to the world’s safest blockchain network, according to Rich Rines, a Core DAO contributor building Bitcoin DeFi solutions. Rines told Cointelegraph:

“[Bitcoin] started as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system then morphed more into a store value and now protects $1.5 trillion of wealth. We’ve seen over the last one and a half years this desire to add more utility to the underlying Bitcoin through the rise of Ordinals, token protocols like BRC 20s and now Runes.”

However, Runes may only be a stepping stone for Bitcoin DeFi, as we see more innovative token standards developed on the Bitcoin network.

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