Jack Dorsey’s relief fund pledges $5M donation to Bitcoin-focused nonprofit

The fund reported it had distributed more than $500 million to projects, including the Tor Project, the Signal Technology Foundation and the Calyx Institute.

Brink, a nonprofit organization aimed at supporting Bitcoin developers, has announced a $5 million donation from Block CEO Jack Dorsey and his Start Small funding group.

In a June 14 tweet, Brink said Dorsey and Start Small pledged to make $1 million in donations annually for the next five years as part of “developer funding efforts.” Prior to his departure as CEO of Twitter, Dorsey launched the fund in April 2020 in an effort to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the Twitter CEO said he had seeded the fund with $1 billion.

According to Start Small’s website, the fund had more than $1.4 billion in funding at the time of publication, with more than $500 million distributed to projects, including the Tor Project — the nonprofit behind the anonymous Tor Browser — the Signal Technology Foundation backing the Signal messaging app, and the Calyx Institute, a digital privacy education platform.

Honored to receive a very generous $5,000,000 pledge to our developer funding efforts from @jack and #startsmall

Brink will receive $1,000,000 per year for the next 5 years.

Thank you for supporting #bitcoin developers!

— Brink (@bitcoinbrink) June 14, 2023

Founded in 2020, Brink offers fellowship and grant programs to support open-source Bitcoin (BTC) developers and engineers. Aside from crypto supporters like Dorsey, digital asset firms such as Nexo have previously made donations to the group as part of efforts to support BTC developers.

Different firms within the crypto and blockchain space have made similar efforts to start funds encouraging developers to come out of the woodwork. Dogecoin (DOGE) started a fund for core developers in December 2022 with $360,000, and metaverse developer Animoca Brands reportedly planned a billion-dollar fund for startups.

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