Brink Gets $150,000 Grant to Support Bitcoin Development

Brink, a new, independent nonprofit organization, will seek to fund and support open-source Bitcoin protocol development. The organization has been launched by former Chaincode Labs developer John Newbery, and Blockstream alumnus Mike Schmidt. 

The company has already secured a $150,000 donation from cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, in order to teach the next generation of Bitcoin developers. What’s more, organizational funding has been provided by investor John Pfeffer, and Xapo CEO Wences Casares. 

In addition, The Human Rights Foundation, Square Crypto and Gemini are funding Brink’s first two fellows.

“We’ll be giving grants to independent developers so that they can spend 100% of their time improving and strengthening Bitcoin,” the Brink team said in a tweet. 

The company will also have a fellowship program, which allows fellows to spend a year learning how to contribute to open source projects. Fellows who participate in this program will have the chance to contribute to several key Bitcoin projects, including Bitcoin Core.

“Other than the Chaincode Residency, it’s hard to establish yourself as a Bitcoin Core dev. There’s a steep learning curve, I hope to move the needle on that with Brink,” Newbery told Bitcoin Magazine.

The Brink team will also be made up of other Bitcoin experts, including David Harding, writer of the Bitcoin Optech newsletter.

“Bitcoin’s value rests on its security and stability. Everything we build on top of Bitcoin depends on the base protocol and reference implementation being rock solid,” the Brick team said, adding that “one critical bug in the protocol or implementation has the potential to crash the entire Bitcoin economy.”