OKCoin offers 'six-figure' grant to Bitcoin software maintainer Marco Falke

OKCoin has offered a "six-figure" grant, i.e. $100,000 or more, to Bitcoin Core software maintainer Marco Falke, the crypto exchange told The Block.

Germany-based Falke has been an active contributor to the Bitcoin code since 2017 and is currently focused on improving Bitcoin's test infrastructure to ensure reliability and security of the network. "Making the Bitcoin Core code more robust is a big priority for me," said Falke.

Specifically, he will focus on fuzz testing. This technique is used in quality assurance to discover errors in code that could lead to malfunctions in networks or security breaches.

Falke will also work on modularizing the Bitcoin Core code to help developers sift through large pieces of the codebase quickly. "Developers are typically good at supporting specific pieces of the code and this helps to clarify the responsibilities," said Falke. "Modularizing the code also provides user advantages; you can turn off modules, like the miner module, or the mempool module, which means you can run Bitcoin Core with less computational resources."

With today's grant, OKCoin said it has provided total grants of over $500,000 to support open-source bitcoin development. Previously, the exchange has awarded grants to bitcoin payment processor BTCPay and individual contributors Fabian Jahr and Amiti Uttarwar.

OKCoin CEO Hong Fang said the exchange provides grants because it is "inherently incentivized to invest in Bitcoin, which is fundamental to the growth of our industry."