Okcoin and Paradigm proudly award a joint grant to Open Source Bitcoin Core maintainer Marco Falke With this grant, Okcoin and Paradigm will provide Falke with a livable income as he works on this open-source, decentralized project. This is the third consecutive year that Okcoin and Paradigm have awarded Falke this grant, demonstrating a long-term commitment to Falke, Bitcoin, and crypto development.
TL;DR
- Okcoin and Paradigm jointly award a third no-strings-attached yearly grant to support Marco Falke’s open source work
- Marco is a maintainer, meaning he reviews and tests Bitcoin Core’s code to eliminate bugs and vulnerabilities
- Although Bitcoin has millions of global investors, its decentralized structure means that Bitcoin Core contributors like Falke aren’t salaried for their work and rely on grants and donations to compensate them for their prodigious efforts
Discover our Open Source Developer Grant program
Investing in Bitcoin development
Okcoin has now invested more than $1,500,000 in Bitcoin open source development through our developer grant program. All of our grants are:
- Open source – Anyone can read, fork, and build on Bitcoin developers’ code
- No strings attached – Grant recipients do no work for Okcoin and devote their full efforts to open source development
- An investment, not a donation – We make these grants as investments in Bitcoin’s future
As a crypto exchange, Okcoin aims to make crypto accessible to everyone, everywhere. Open source development of the Bitcoin network is critical to the growth of the entire crypto ecosystem, and therefore, to our mission. Our grant recipients further that goal by developing and mainting sustainable and responsible cryptocurrency infrastructure.
Despite millions of people worldwide having invested in Bitcoin, Okcoin found in a 2021 study that 80% of retail investors don’t know that Bitcoin contributors receive no salary and rely on crowdfunding, donations, and grants.
“The work Marco does is integral to the success of Bitcoin and Okcoin is thrilled to support him for a third consecutive year, this time in partnership with Paradigm,” said Okcoin COO Jason Lau. “Over 30 million Bitcoin wallet addresses exist, and each one relies on the network functioning properly. Marco’s code maintenance has helped make Bitcoin’s network more secure and scalable, and we look forward to his continued positive impact.”
As one of Bitcoin Core’s most prolific developers, Falke is one of the six people in the world with the ability to approve or deny proposed changes to the code underlying the world’s biggest cryptocurrency. The role of a Core maintainer is to ensure that contributions from developers are in line with the Bitcoin community’s protocol improvement requirements. This includes things like reviewing new and existing contributions to ensure continuity, automating stress tests to find security vulnerabilities, modularizing Bitcoin code to help developers review specific chunks, and much more to help ensure the Bitcoin Core code remains healthy and secure.
To learn more about Marco’s hunt for vulnerabilities in Bitcoin Core and what he’s doing to help maintain the integrity of the network, read our blog post on Marco’s contributions and efforts. Want to take a technical deep dive into the work done by contributors like Marco Falke? Give these Github issues a closer look.
About Okcoin
Founded in 2013, Okcoin is a US-headquartered cryptocurrency exchange serving 190+ countries and territories. The platform enables retail and institutional investors to purchase 50+ digital assets using local currencies, with a mission to make crypto easy for everyone including first-time buyers. Okcoin was the first centralized exchange to offer direct entry into decentralized finance (DeFi) with Earn, a tool for earning APY through decentralized lending, liquidity pools, staking, and more. In addition, Okcoin offers institutional trading tools and APIs to asset managers, venture capital and hedge funds, retail brokers, payment processors, and more. Follow Okcoin on Twitter at @Okcoin and visit okcoin.com for more information.
