Nexo Advocates Ongoing Bitcoin R&D With Donation To Brink

To support fundamental research and development, digital asset financial institution Nexo has contributed $150,000 to Brink to help continually strengthen the Bitcoin protocol and foster the developer community.

Award Reflects Nexo’s Commitment To Open-Source Maintenance & Development Efforts

As cryptocurrencies enjoy the attention of rising valuations, important industry stakeholders are signaling that more must be done in support of the protocol that spawned this trillion-dollar-plus blockchain web.

To address expanding maintenance demands, global cryptocurrency financial service provider Nexo has awarded $150,000 to Brink, a non-profit organization aimed at maintaining and improving the Bitcoin protocol by funding, educating, and mentoring the developer community.

“The $150,000 donation to Brink marks Nexo’s commitment to open-source funding and supporting Bitcoin,” according to Nexo Co-founder and Managing Partner Antoni Trenchev.

The funds will be allocated towards an independent Bitcoin developer through Brink’s grant program. Through this initiative and the fellowship program, which onboards exceptionally talented developers into Bitcoin protocol development, Brink provides the financial assistance which makes this maintenance and continued R&D possible.

Bitcoin Far From Finalized

The central Bitcoin design may be relatively cemented, but protocol developers play a key role in its continued operation. Their experience is necessary to maintain the software to ensure Bitcoin remains usable and able to convey value for time to come.

While many believe that Bitcoin’s more rigid consensus protocol contributes to overall stability, that doesn’t mean that the system itself doesn’t adapt and evolve over time. Developers continue to discover the presence of memory, CPU, or bandwidth exhaustion bugs, remote code execution, and logic errors, which could impede overall network functionality.

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Since 2010, over 50 major and minor vulnerabilities and exposures have been publicly disclosed although this list is not exhaustive. Many more have been fixed without fanfare. Work completed by developers and contributors is generally not acknowledged for years after these changes are implemented, often as a measure to protect the protocol’s users and prevent exploitation of these holes in the software.

The Participation Shortfall

As the Bitcoin network use grows with time, so will the need for these very valuable developer skill sets which are required to maintain the infrastructure that supports the crypto economy.

To that end, Brink is facing the challenges head-on by engaging directly with the community of contributors and funding this open-source development. “Bitcoin's security depends on the experience and dedication of open source protocol developers….and we always welcome more contributions to this cause,” adds John Newbery, Co-founder and Executive Director of Brink.

The latest donation by Nexo echoes pledges from other noteworthy industry participants including Square Crypto, Gemini, Kraken, and the Human Rights Foundation. Yet, funding for this open-source initiative remains constrained despite its relative importance.

Nexo’s Trenchev concludes, “We’re proud to be part of such an exclusive club, but we also believe the industry should do more. What if some of the public companies that recently started allocating billions to BTC also put a small percentage of that, say 0.25%, in support of Bitcoin development?”


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