The funds from Coinbase will serve as the needed boost in attracting more innovative developers into the industry.
Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange has announced its first-ever Bitcoin core developer awards, an initiative it first announced back in October 2020. The Coinbase awards were given to two recipients after being reviewed by the fund’s advisory board which includes Dan Boneh, a Professor of Cryptography at Stanford University, as well as Bitcoin developers Amiti Uttarwar, Felix Weis, Carla Kirk-Cohen, and Anthony Towns.
According to the announcement made by the exchange, the named recipients for the Fund’s first Bitcoin developer grants include a developer with the Twitter Pseudonym 0xB10C (@0xB10C) and João Barbosa (@promag).
“Both candidates demonstrated a consistent history of contributing to Bitcoin Core,” Coinbase said in the release. Adding that the two recipients provided the Fund’s advisory board (as named above) “with a clear, actionable outline of the projects they intend to work on.,” and as such, “they will both be funded to work on Bitcoin for all of 2021, with their grants funded in Bitcoin or USD based on the recipient’s preference.”
The innovative works of 0xB10C revolve around “his plans to build and improve existing open-source tools, including a web interface visualizing forks on, for example, the new Signet test network.” The Coinbase awards advisory board considered previous works by 0xB10C which includes mempool.observer, as well as transactionfee.info. Besides helping to develop the space in this regard, 0xB10C will also be publishing “research articles on how the Bitcoin network is being used, provide the review on Bitcoin Core PRs, and help improve functional testing,” according to the Coinbase release.
Barbosa on his part is picking up his funding from Coinbase after Bitmain stopped his funding as revealed earlier this month. Barbosa is determined to continue in helping to improve the Bitcoin Core UI on Android and iOS through the development of a Bitcoin Core GUI based on the Qt Quick framework as the Coinbase awards or Crypto Community Fund Grant will aid him to do. He was selected by the advisory board who values his previous works on Code reviewing.
Coinbase Awards as an Incentive to Drive Innovation
The development of the blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem is the responsibility of everyone in the crypto sphere. While many Bitcoin developers carry out their work as volunteers to help maintain and improve Bitcoin’s code, according to Coindesk, the funds from Coinbase will serve as the needed boost in attracting more innovative developers into the space.
The relative age of blockchain and Bitcoin is many years below two decades, implying that there is still a long way to go. With this Coinbase award initiative, many other private companies or stakeholders may join the train to launch similar crypto community developer grants, a move that will certainly bolster the growth, and acceptance of both blockchain technology and the entire hoard of digital currencies that abounds today.
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