Bitcoin Core contributor Michael Ford, aka “fanquake,” has been awarded a $60,000 grant by the parent firm of top crypto derivatives platform BitMEX.
In an official announcement
published on July 12, BitMEX owner and operator HDR Global Trading
revealed its decision to award Ford the grant, noting that he has just
recently been made the latest official maintainer of the Bitcoin Core software project.
This means that the developer’s key has been added to the “trusted keys list” file on GitHub — giving him the ability to merge in changes to the Bitcoin Core codebase.
HDR
Global Trading has presented its decision as a way of offering material
support to those who work — usually on a voluntary basis — to further
the development of cryptocurrency:
“HDR Global Trading
Limited, like all other companies in the cryptocurrency space, relies
heavily on the (mostly-volunteer) work of coders dedicated to the
mission and ideals of Bitcoin. This work is difficult, demanding, and
often thankless. We believe it is the duty of corporations to give back
to the projects from which they benefit – and from which their very
business model stems.”
The post outlines that the
grant is exclusive and requires Ford to work on Bitcoin Core in his
capacity as a Core software maintainer — pointing to issues such as
further developing the network’s robustness, scalability and privacy.
Equally,
HDR Global Trading claims that the grant is awarded on a
“no-strings-attached” basis — presumably implying that Ford will not be
expected to contribute to BitMEX itself.
The announcement
emphasizes that it is only thanks to the critical development work of
developers such as Ford that platforms such as BitMEX have sealed their
success:
“Without the millions of free man-hours from
dedicated OSS developers powering everything from our operating systems,
to our web servers, to our ops tools and Bitcoin itself, the BitMEX
trading platform could not have been built.”
HDR Global Trading has also recently made an “unconditional” donation
to the MIT Digital Currency initiative — which conducts research into
the development of the global crypto ecosystem — noting at the time that
it was particularly keen to help support the work of Bitcoin Core
developers Wladimir van der Laan and Cory Fields.
In late June, BitMEX — the world’s single biggest bitcoin derivatives provider — posted record volumes across its operations as bitcoin (BTC)
hit $13,000. The platform reported $1 billion of open interest in the
market, with trading topping $13 billion and above $16 billion across
the BitMEX’s full product range.
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