Maelstrom’s Bitcoin Grants Hit 20 Months — 5 Developers, 4 Active, Here’s What They’ve Accomplished
Maelstrom, the family office of BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, has published the first annual report for its Bitcoin Grant Program. Over a 20-month period beginning in October 2024, the program has supported five developers, with four currently active. They are paid monthly in Bitcoin, with grants capped at $400,000 per developer annually.
Two developers focus on Bitcoin Core: **Rkrux** is a prolific code reviewer, working on MuSig2 and wallet descriptor modernization. **Stratospher** focuses on critical consensus and peer-to-peer network code, fixing bugs that could cause network splits.
Two others advance Bitcoin privacy: **Benalleng** develops Payjoin, a protocol that breaks common surveillance heuristics, with integrations in several wallets. **Macgyver** works on Silent Payments, enabling reusable static addresses without on-chain reuse, driving wallet adoption and standardization.
The program funds only open-source Bitcoin protocol work with no commercial ties. The report highlights this model as a direct, transparent way for successful industry participants to fund the essential, unglamorous development underpinning Bitcoin's security and privacy.
bitcoinist06/10 13:32
