In August, we made a call for applications through our Crypto Community Fund focused on blockchain developers who contribute directly to a blockchain codebase, or researchers producing white papers. Today, we’re excited to announce the Fund’s second batch of developer grants to 6 recipients: AMIS Technologies, Josie, Escanor Liones, WeFuzz Research, and two developers funded through a partnership with Brink.
All candidates demonstrated a consistent history of contributing to blockchains, as well as innovative ideas, and provided the Fund’s advisory board with a clear, actionable outline of the projects they intend to work on. They will both be funded to work on their projects for all of 2022, with their grants funded in BTC or USD based on the recipient’s preference.
AMIS Technologies (github, blog) will be providing various digital signature protocols based on multi-party computation (abbrev. MPC) in the blockchain including ECDSA, Schnorr Signature, Bls Signature, and Bip32( i.e. Hierarchical deterministic wallet). The audited Library will continue to open to developers. They believe that MPC will be an alternative option for private key management.
Josie (github, twitter) will be working on the unit, functional, and fuzz testing in Bitcoin Core by focusing on improving test coverage and refactoring for performance and clarity. He will also be supporting three researchers on a project centered around analyzing bitcoin transactions, specifically on fees and privacy when used as a means of payment. Last but not least, he will be performing code review and testing PRs in Bitcoin Core.
Escanor Liones (github, twiter) will be designing and implementing a sequence of blockchains to promote the study, advancement and improvement of mathematics, cryptography and digital security. The present grant will fund one of those blockchains. His previous published work focused on Information-Theoretical Private Information Retrieval (IT-PIR) in the form of a practical Postgres C/C++ Extension using Quantum Resistant Lattice-based Cryptography; see the open sourced implementation here. A paper will be published with the details about the design in early summer; and, a blog or a paper towards the end of the year speaking to the implementation and the experience of designing, building and deploying a blockchain.
WeFuzz (github, twitter, website, discord) plans to build a, fully decentralized, crowdsourced security audit and bug bounty platform: a set of smart contracts that allow developers and companies to get their smart contracts, blockchains, web3 applications etc., audited by the decentralized auditors’ and hackers’ community and makes it easy for everyone to secure their assets. WEFUZZ (Chaitanya and Ranjeet) aims to become the *Hacker DAO*.
Brink (website) is a 501c3 that exists to strengthen the Bitcoin protocol and network through fundamental research and development, and to support the Bitcoin developer community through funding, education, and mentoring. They support and mentor new contributors to open source Bitcoin development through their fellowship program, and support the work of established Bitcoin protocol engineers through their grants program. Coinbase has funded two Bitcoin core developers through their partnership with Brink.
The Crypto Community Fund grantees will provide periodic updates about their work through public blog posts. The Fund will also be placing an additional call for developer grants later this year, and encourages future applicants to subscribe to updates here.
