Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has made an offering to the cryptocurrency community: he will pay developers to work full-time on Bitcoin Core and other “cryptocurrency ecosystem” projects.
Are you currently contributing to bitcoin-core or other crypto ecosystem projects for free in your off-time? We’d like to pay you to do it full-time. If interested, DM @SqCrypto, and follow for updates on our progress. Thank you!
— jack (@jack) March 20, 2019
Bitcoin Core is an open-source protocol. There is no one company funding Bitcoin development, and it has no leader. Any budding programmer from around the world can contribute building the network.
Another tweet from Dorsey said: “Square is hiring 3-4 [cryptocurrency] engineers and [one] designer to work full-time on open source contributions to the [Bitcoin/cryptocurrency] ecosystem,” before mentioning devs could even be paid in Bitcoin. Square is Dorsey’s payment services company.
Dorsey’s inspiration to fund growth within the cryptocurrency ecosystem shouldn’t surprise anyone. In fact, he was an early investor in Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, a proposed solution to its scaling problem.
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He also espoused its benefits in a recent appearance on the popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast. In response, the Bitcoin community welcomed him with open arms, especially after he participated in the infamous “Lightning Torch” experiment that saw Bitcoin sent around the world, nudged along by tweets from nominees.
While Dorsey’s tweet names Bitcoin Core directly (we know exactly what he’s talking about there, at least), “other crypto ecosystem projects” is pretty vague. Hard Fork has reached out for clarification and will update this piece should Dorsey reply.
In the meantime, you can read exactly how Dorsey has evolved to become Bitcoin’s most unlikely champion here.
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