Christmas story of the mysterious bitcoin santa

If you are an open-source application developer, look in your inbox and check the spam folder, suddenly there is a letter from Bitcoin Santa. In the best traditions of the Bitcoin community (yes, and Santa Claus), no one knows exactly who is hiding under the pseudonym Bitcoin Grant , but it is known that he, or she, or they, occasionally appear from nowhere and give gifts open source system developers. The only difference from Santa, their gifts are large amounts in bitcoins.



Over the past months, they have been looking for open source projects and are contacting developers to encourage their efforts to strengthen the community, while doing this anonymously, and do not require anything in return.

Bitcoin Grant Mission

Doing the right thing and working on what you believe is an undoubtedly noble goal, but in our current reality, often this goal is supported only by considerations of altruism. This is especially true of work on open source projects, which from the very beginning are virtuous in their essence, but towards which reproaches of financial instability are constantly pouring in. We are people after all. We need to pay for the apartment, we want to eat, we need to somehow live. Simply put - we need money. This, for the most part, endangers long-term ideals, replacing them with our short-term needs.

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We want to create a better reality, one that agrees with what we do every day and what we believe in. We want to eliminate the stinging “price of opportunity” while achieving our goals. We want the open source code to become the center of moving forward, instead of remaining a hobby or catching thoughts in hindsight. And we want to build this reality with you.



The solution we see is bitcoin. Bitcoin is the first open source project built from scratch, but with subsequent monetization. In addition to getting a good mood from work, all our efforts can definitely be quantified, and any excellent work deserves concrete compensation. Bitcoin eliminates your need to compromise, if you have worked so far purely out of love for your brainchild, then Bitcoin Grant would like to finance you, unconditionally, just so that your excellent work continues. Yes, it is just that simple.



The only requirement that we make is that the project should be “open source” in nature, but this does not mean that we are limited only by software. We do not have an application to fill out, you do not need to send us your email address, all you have to do is to continue your work, and Bitcoin Grant will give you a hand.



Projects that we supported:

• Matt C. - Core Dev - github.com/TheBlueMatt
• Pieter W. - Core Dev - github.com/sipa
• Wladimir L. - Core Dev - github.com/laanwj
• Avalon - ASIC - avalon-asic.com
• Bitfury - ASIC - bitfury.org
• Thomas V. - Electrum - github.com/spesmilo/electrum
• P2Pool - Pool - github.com/forrestv/p2pool
• Replicant - Android - replicant.us

Investing in the future

At the moment, Bitcoin Grant has already supported many Bitcoin -related projects, such as Avalon or Bitfury, a company that builds and sells mining equipment, developers of the current version of the system, creators of a “lightweight” wallet for working with BTC, and these donations are definitely , support the network as a whole.



For example, the developers of the miner Avalon at the end of 2012 were transferred 10.000 BTC after a short email correspondence, during which the mysterious benefactors found out the plans of the creators of the device, talked about the future of the project, and found that the company is in the process of developing the second version - just transferred to the account ten thousand bitcoins, without demanding anything in return and without requiring the fulfillment of any obligations. They asked to continue to work, and said that their goal was to support and launch not only Bitcoin-related projects in the big world, but generally any open source projects, but in the end one hundred thousand dollars, at the time, helped the Bitcoin Avalon developers to launch the second device in the series.



But the mysterious benefactors do not try to limit themselves only to projects related to BTC - they, for example, supported the development of an operating system for smartphones called Replicant , android, sending 50 coins to the developers of this system on August 1, 2013:

Dear Replicant Developers, on the behalf of some private donor (s):



Your work (s) on the open source, namely Replicant have not gone unnoticed. Thank you for the bitcoins. 50 bitcoins has been sent to 13tgjejUJ6NtQVX9HvKz8svdcuWPNwgr5T. The correspondence will not be kept in strict confidence. They are being sent as both you and incentive for community involvement. You can anticipate additional contributions in the future.



Sincerely

The bitcoin grant

Financing open source projects is a natural consequence of the fact that the system biktouin itself is an open source project where the financial plan is literally wrapped in source code, and the programmers who developed it from the very beginning received a large amount of digital currency even when practically worthless. We may not know who is behind the Bitcoin Grant , but you can be sure that they received their bitcoins long before the rest of the world realized the value of this cryptocurrency. Their website lists eight projects that they supported, but it is already known that there are more such projects: one of the examples is 25 BTC to the project fund, the purpose of which is to launch a miner into space .



The plan is to send a small satellite into the orbit with a computer that will communicate with the land miners by radio. The author of this idea claims that a satellite node can help the Bitcoin network to repel an attack known as the “ Sybil attack ” - when malicious computers flood sites of a p2p network with data in order to conduct bitcoin transactions more than once, the criminal intent described in the work of the University of Cornell Selfish Miner Scenario , which claims that such an attack could bring down the entire system. The satellite launch project received 25 bitcoins , which is about 17 thousand dollars at the moment.



As a futuristic model, but of a slightly different kind, one of the developers of the p2p system underlying Bitcoin (who also received a present) says that the system requires a more sophisticated financing system in order to reach the next level of software development:

“This is a really interesting model, but it does not clearly motivate people to do any particular work. To really push gas, the system needs to become more streamlined. "

By ordering, he understands such principles as, for example, assurance contracts - where sponsors could use technologies embedded in the protocol itself to collectively entrust and pay for program development. This scheme is well known on the example of a kickstarter and similar services, although the principle itself is much broader and has a political background as well.



But so far this is all a matter of a distant or not very future, but for now - the repetition of a simple rule indicated on the site of this covered secret organization:

We do not have an application to fill out, you do not need to send us your email address, all you have to do is to continue your work, and Bitcoin Grant will give you a hand.

So keep working on your open source projects, and there will be a holiday in your street too - Santa Claus with bitcoins in the bag will come to you.



Sources and related materials:

Articles in Vired about this mission and about the launch of a miner in space

Mysterious organization website

Open source about donation

TJournal in Russian