On stage at the Bitcoin 2023 conference, Brink announced a matching campaign for donations from Bitcoin mining firm Marathon Digital Holdings to support the work of Bitcoin Core developers. Marathon will match donations made to Brink on a two-for-one basis for the duration of the conference, which ends on May 20, and then match donations one for one through the end of the year, up to $1 million total.
“We’re going to match dollar for dollar $500,000-worth of donations that Brink receives for Core developers. More importantly, we will donate two-for-one if you donate money during this conference,” said Fred Thiel, Marathon’s CEO. “So, if you believe in the importance of supporting Core development efforts … then I strongly urge you (to) donate 50 cents, $1, whatever you can during the conference.”
By committing to match all third-party donations up to an aggregate of $500,000 until December 31, 2023, Marathon hopes to advance Brink’s support for the developers who maintain and upgrade Bitcoin’s code. Since 2020, Brink has supported numerous developers in their work to make Bitcon more accessible and advanced through grants, mentorship and education, including former lead maintainer Marco Falke, Lightning Network white paper author Tadge Dryja and Bitcoin Core PR Review Club’s Gloria Zhao.
“We have nine developers in five different countries that are all independent developers funded by Brink,” explained Mike Schmidt, the executive director of Brink. “I think we would all agree that we would want this Bitcoin software that’s powering all of this innovation on top to be better reviewed, better tested, better maintained, easier to run and more performant. So that’s why at Brink we fund grantees that are spending upwards of 50% of their time on testing and reviewing the Bitcoin Core code, proposing changes to the Core codebase and basically making that software more secure.”
Donations made to Brink through its website are now eligible for the match. Thiel framed the campaign as part of Marathon’s larger commitment to securing the Bitcoin network as a significant contributor of hash rate, the computing power that ensures Bitcoin’s immutability.
“We believe that it’s the most secure protocol out there and we think we and the rest of the industry should do everything they can to support the developers and really foment as much activity in the space as possible,” Thiel said.