More New Bitcoin Dev Funds Needed, Key Funding Players Revealed – Study

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Tim Alper

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Tim Alper

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Tim Alper is a British journalist and features writer who has worked at Cryptonews.com since 2018. He has written for media outlets such as the BBC, the Guardian, and Chosun Ilbo. He has also worked...

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June 26, 2023 06:54 EDT

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The outlook for Bitcoin (BTC) development is generally positive, and although funding and training incentives “could improve,” funding is “far more distributed than it has been in the past,” per a new report.

The report, compiled by BitMEX, confirmed many of the findings of Cryptonews.com’s own investigations into who funds Bitcoin development in January this year.

The BitMEX authors wrote, for instance, that Chaincode Labs “is now the clear leader in terms of developer funding for Bitcoin Core.”

The BitMEX report found that Blockstream and Lightning Labs were the two companies putting the most funding into open-source Bitcoin and Lightning Network development.

However, the report’s authors stated that among “the biggest challenges going forward” would be identifying sources of “funding and training” for new Bitcoin developers.

They also noted that more sustainability was needed when it comes to developer financing, saying there was a need to ensure that “a large share of funding” comes from “retained earnings from businesses with different business models.”

Collaboration is another perceived pain point.

The authors wrote of the importance of “ensuring developers effectively collaborate while receiving independent funding sources.”

Regardless, BitMEX concluded that the scene was now in a “reasonably strong situation,” particularly when “compared to the 2012 to 2014 period when there was only one significant funder, The Bitcoin Foundation.”

And the report authors were not shy of giving exchanges – including BitMEX itself – a hearty pat on the back, writing,

“Particularly encouraging is the recent emergence of BitMEX, BTSE and OKCoin to the scene. This brings much-needed diversity to the group of donors, potentially improving the level of sustainability, in particular these exchanges are a new type of entity and are funding developers out of retained earnings, rather than using donations or venture capital funds.”

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Learn more: Who Funds Bitcoin Developers?