41 Developers Power a $1.7 Trillion Empire: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Bitcoin Core Development Team and Sponsorship Ecosystem

Original Article Title: Funding  a $1.2 Trillion Dollar Project
Original Article Authors: DanO'Prey, MasNakachi,  1A1z

Original Article Translation: Eric, Foresight News

How many developers does a $2 trillion company need? What is the development cost?

According to publicly available information, among the current $2 trillion market cap companies listed on the US stock market, the number of technical or development staff ranges from a few thousand to tens of thousands, with annual salary expenditures reaching hundreds of millions to tens of billions of dollars.

For the once highest valued company at $2.5 trillion and now with a market cap of nearly $1.75 trillion, Bitcoin, these two numbers correspond to 41 and 840 million dollars, respectively. Yes, the undisputed "king" of the cryptocurrency field, with a core development team of only 41 people, is sustained through yearly multi-million dollar donations and salaries from a few companies.

Through dozens of hours of interview research, 1A1z, in a report, unveiled the mysterious team behind Bitcoin, Bitcoin Core, and its backers. This report, released in October last year, revealed the full picture of the Bitcoin 2023, 2024 development team, and donors, which may seem somewhat outdated, but changes in Bitcoin's developer ecosystem occur on an annual basis, and even today, it is almost consistent with the time of the report.

The purpose of this report is to make participants aware that while the world is focused on Bitcoin's price, Bitcoin is still somewhat "fragile" to some extent, and as perhaps the only truly decentralized project, each of us can contribute. Special thanks to user X, Aaron Zhang, for the report interpretation and the latest updates for 2025.

World's Most Efficient Distributed Team

The first chart in the report illustrates the difference between Bitcoin and tech companies with similar market caps:

In 2023, Meta had at least 20,000 developers, with a market cap of around $1.5 trillion, while Bitcoin, with a market cap of $1.2 trillion at the same time, had only 41 people. These 41 developers contribute code to Bitcoin Core, the so-called Bitcoin core developers. Among the 41 core developers, there are 5 special maintainers, who are the only 5 people in the world authorized to incorporate improvement proposals from core developers into Bitcoin Core.

It is worth noting that there have only been 13 individuals with this identity in the past 10 years, and we will discuss the stories of these 13 individuals later.

If you think Bitcoin and publicly traded companies are not comparable, the report also used Web3 projects for comparison. Taking Polkadot as an example, in 2023, Polkadot's spending on core developers reached $7 million, but its market cap was only 1.2% of Bitcoin's. In 2024, Polkadot's spending on activities similar to Bitcoin development reached $16.8 million. Meanwhile, in 2023, Ethereum's spending on core developers was around $32.3 million, and in 2024, it was $50 million.

The individuals contributing to Bitcoin's code are definitely not limited to these 41 people. The numbers given in the report only cover those who directly contribute code to Bitcoin Core, excluding test engineers, researchers, and protocols like the Lightning Network and Nostr, and even the closely related libsecp256k1 library is not included in the calculation.

The numerical "discrepancy" indeed reflects Bitcoin's robust "anti-fragility." Bitcoin does not have a foundation organization like other projects, which means it lacks the ability to raise funds and allocate resources like other projects. However, the author believes that this is precisely why Bitcoin does not rely on a single entity for decision-making and does not have issues with fund mismanagement. Every penny is spent judiciously: "Bitcoin's staunch resistance to any form of centralization or single point of failure is its uniqueness, and it is the only way we believe Bitcoin can succeed."

Early in the author's career, they once asked a question to an investment institution during an interview: given the low efficiency of Web3 projects' decentralized DAOs, where even simple tasks are often hard to achieve a consensus on, what is the inherent value of the system? The response was that inefficiency is one of the operating principles of this system because achieving widespread consensus on an issue cannot be efficient. This seemingly mindless and inefficient "democracy" is precisely where its value lies.

At this point, you might think that the report itself sounds like a "paean" to Bitcoin, perhaps these data reflect some of Bitcoin's resilience, but this resilience is, to some extent, a choice made helplessly under extreme decentralization. In other words, as mentioned at the beginning, Bitcoin Core is fragile, and our attention and investment in the protocol layer of this trillion-dollar empire that has lifted many people across classes overnight are still inadequate.

Who is Sponsoring Bitcoin Core Developers?

The author of the report made a strict distinction between the Sponsor and the Donor. To explain the difference between the two, the author believes that the Sponsor may lean more towards execution, such as ensuring funds are allocated to specified developers, while the Donor plays the role of a "benefactor."

Before diving deep into these organizations that have selflessly contributed to Bitcoin's development, to prevent you from being overwhelmed, let me show you a picture first.

The report lists 13 major funding organizations, which must have directly employed Bitcoin Core developers or have a sustained, direct funding program for core developers. One-time funding or non-sustained funding programs are not included.

Blockstream

Blockstream was founded by early Bitcoin Core developers who have contributed significantly to Bitcoin Core and libsecp256k1. However, its corporate identity has been questioned for potential self-interest that could impact Bitcoin. Currently, Blockstream employs only one core developer. Blockstream has disclosed a total of at least $510 million in funding across 6 rounds from 2014 to the present, giving it a taste of being the "ConsenSys of the Bitcoin ecosystem."

Blockstream's co-founder and CEO, Adam Back, is praised as "one of the closest to Satoshi Nakamoto." His Hashcash proof-of-work system proposed in 1997 for anti-spam is the prototype of Bitcoin's PoW consensus mechanism. Satoshi Nakamoto referenced Adam Back's work in the Bitcoin whitepaper and exchanged technical details with him via email. After founding Blockstream, Adam Back also led the development of Bitcoin sidechains like Liquid and scaling solutions like the Lightning Network for privacy and expansion.

Chaincode Labs

Chaincode Labs was founded by Alex Morcos and Suhas Daftuar in Manhattan, New York, in 2014. Alex Morcos, who previously focused on automated trading and quantitative trading, became a Bitcoin Core developer in 2012 and remains an active contributor to the Bitcoin Core development community. Suhas Daftuar, who also worked in trading before delving into the Web3 industry, founded Hudson River Trading LLC (HRT). Both are pioneers in Wall Street algorithmic trading.

Chaincode Labs is driving the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem through self-funded initiatives, including advancing the reliability and scalability of the Bitcoin protocol; nurturing Bitcoin developers through tutorials and project funding; and conducting cutting-edge research on threats to Bitcoin such as quantum computing. This year, Chaincode Labs published the "Bitcoin Post-Quantum" report, proposing a migration path based on NIST's post-quantum encryption standards, which includes introducing new signature schemes (such as Dilithium or Falcon) through a soft fork, with phased implementation expected between 2026 and 2028.

Chaincode Labs has also been a key driver behind important Bitcoin network upgrades like Taproot and SegWit, and has been one of the sponsors of earlier independent third-party audits for Bitcoin Core.

Of note, as mentioned earlier, Aaron Zhang announced on the 3rd of this month on X that he has become the China Regional Partner for Chaincode Labs' Bitcoin Open Source Software (BOSS) Challenge. The BOSS Challenge is a free 30-day coding challenge, coupled with a 2-month incubation period, designed to help developers engage with open-source projects. It has already helped dozens of developers start from scratch and become full-time open-source engineers.

Digital Currency Initiative

The Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) is not strictly an organization but rather an academic initiative launched by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015. It serves as a neutral academic entity that took on core developers after the dissolution of the Bitcoin Foundation. MIT DCI accepts donations to provide long-term employment for Bitcoin developers, offering stable salaries and a research environment that allows them to focus on protocol security, performance, and consensus improvements, generating academic papers, open-source code, and public reports. It also engages in central bank digital currency (CBDC) research and collaborates on Project Hamilton with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

DCI emphasizes open source, self-sovereignty, and privacy protection principles to demonstrate the value of decentralized technology to policymakers while maintaining independent contributions to the Bitcoin Core codebase.

Spiral

Spiral is an independent Bitcoin development entity under Block (formerly Square), established in 2019 (initially named Square Crypto) and officially rebranded as Spiral in January 2022. As of December 2025, Spiral has funded over 100 open-source projects, investing billions of dollars to drive Bitcoin's privacy, security, scalability, and user experience (UX) improvements. Spiral emphasizes its independence, not under direct control of Block or its founder Jack Dorsey, but rather driven by the Bitcoin developer community.

The current lead of Spiral is former Google engineer Steve Lee, and team members include former Bitcoin Core maintainers and Lightning Labs engineers. While Spiral's sponsorship is wide-ranging, publicly available information indicates its core revolves around the Lightning Network, aiming to enhance Bitcoin's payment efficiency through the Lightning Network, aligning with Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision.

OKX

This needs no introduction, but it's worth mentioning that OKX's sponsorship program began with OKCoin in 2019, later taken over by OKX and has been upheld since, now primarily driven by executives Lennix Lai and Hong Fang. OKX currently supports crucial developers such as Amiti Uttarwar and Marco Falke, along with other organizations sponsoring Bitcoin Core, such as Brink, Vinteum, and 2140, which we will touch on shortly.

Human Rights Foundation

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) was established in the United States in 2005, aiming to promote and protect human rights in closed societies globally, focusing on combating authoritarian regimes, authoritarian governments, and tyranny. HRF has long supported Sakharov Prize and Vaclav Havel Prize laureates, as well as renowned dissidents such as Liu Xiaobo, Navanethem Pillay, Kim Jong-nam. It has funded thousands of grassroots human rights projects in over 70 countries worldwide.

Since 2019, HRF has started to view Bitcoin as one of the 21st century's most important "human rights technologies" and believes Bitcoin is a powerful tool against financial surveillance, financial oppression, and monetary despotism. In May 2019, HRF established the HRF Bitcoin Development Fund to sponsor open-source development of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, having donated over 120 bitcoins to date.

Brink

Brink is a non-profit organization co-founded in 2020 by Mike Schmidt and former Chaincode Labs developer John Newbery. It aims to cultivate and support the next generation of Bitcoin protocol developers through full-time salary sponsorships, mentorship training, and community building, addressing the "succession crisis" in Bitcoin core development.

Each year, Brink selects 4 to 6 promising engineers, providing 1 to 2 years of full-time salary (approximately $120,000–180,000 per year) for them to dedicate themselves to contributing to Bitcoin Core and related protocols. Currently, Brink has funded over 20 developers, with notable figures including Gloria Zhao (now a Bitcoin Core maintainer), Greg Sanders, Josie Baker, among others. Brink is currently the most widely recognized "Bitcoin Core developer incubator" in the community, with almost all newcomers to the Bitcoin Core maintenance team after 2022 having received Brink's funding or training.

Brink's operational funding is 100% donation-based, with donors including Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, the previously mentioned Chaincode Labs, HRF, Spiral, as well as exchanges like Gemini, Bitfinex, Kraken, and hundreds of individual donors.

Btrust

Btrust was established in 2021, founded with 500 bitcoins by Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z, based in Lagos, Nigeria. It focuses on promoting African and Indian developers' participation in Bitcoin and the Lightning Network's open-source development through education and funding. As of December 2025, Btrust has trained hundreds of African developers and funded over 50 open-source projects. Btrust early on acquired the African Bitcoin developer training project Qala and integrated it into the Btrust Builders Fellowship.

Btrust acts as the "African operations center" for Bitcoin. In addition to funding development and providing training, it also hosts BitDev events in major African cities and maintains weekly Bitcoin ecosystem news updates tailored to the African community.

In September 2024, Nigerian Bitcoin core developer Abubakar Nur Khalil was appointed as the organization's interim CEO. He is the co-founder of Qala, which was acquired by Btrust. In addition to this role, Abubakar Nur Khalil has been a Bitcoin core developer since 2020 and has been providing information on the development of the African Bitcoin ecosystem for Forbes and writing investment insights focusing on macro trends. Furthermore, he is a founding partner of Recursive Capital.

OpenSats

OpenSats was founded in 2020 by the Bitcoin open-source community, with key proponents including Lightning Labs co-founder Elizabeth Stark. The establishment of OpenSats was largely driven by concerns in 2020 about the stagnation of Bitcoin protocol development and maintenance due to a lack of developer funding. Since its inception, OpenSats' funding focus has expanded beyond Bitcoin core developers to include a wide range of open-source projects around Bitcoin, such as Nostr and lightweight nodes. Over the past 5 years, OpenSats has provided approximately $30 million in funding to over 330 contributors.

Vinteum

Vinteum was founded in August 2022 by Bitcoin core contributor Lucas Ferreira and former Brink developer Bruno Ely Garcia, aiming to support builders in the Bitcoin ecosystem in Brazil and Latin America.

Vinteum can be seen as a product of the 2022 Bitcoin "developer diversification" wave and has already funded over 20 developers to become full-time open-source project contributors, contributing to the review, testing, and improvement of the Taproot upgrade. A 2025 report indicates that its projects account for over 15% of Bitcoin contributions in Latin America. Additionally, Vinteum is committed to advancing Bitcoin adoption in the context of Brazil's high inflation.

Maelstrom

Maelstrom is a Bitcoin-specific venture capital initiative led by BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes' family office. Maelstrom primarily focuses on investment activities and has established the "Bitcoin Grant Program" under its umbrella. According to the official website, the fund currently supports four full-time developers, funding projects that range from Bitcoin core development to initiatives such as the Bitcoin privacy tools Payjoin, Silent Payments, and developments related to peer-to-peer network privacy.

Prior to this, Maelstrom supported projects such as the Nostr protocol and client ecosystem, the Fedimint ecosystem, and sponsored Chaincode's BOSS Challenge this year. Additionally, in the third quarter of this year, Maelstrom launched the Bitcoin Moonshot Grants, a Bitcoin-specific funding program designed for high-risk, high-potential Bitcoin projects that sound "crazy but game-changing" and emphasize radical innovation. As of December 2025, this program has funded 5 to 10 early-stage projects, with a total investment of approximately $20 to $30 million.

B4OS (Bitcoin For Open Source)

B4OS was launched in April 2024 by the Spanish-language Bitcoin learning community Librería de Satoshi. It is a free, advanced Bitcoin open-source training course aimed at senior developers in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Spain. B4OS offers training courses on Bitcoin basics, Lightning Network development, and FOSS tools (such as Rust/Python). B4OS has a small funding scale, ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 per developer.

2140

2140 was announced at the 2024 Bitcoin Amsterdam Conference by two Bitcoin developers, Josie Baker and Ruben Somsen, with OKX being the main sponsor of the initiative. The name 2140 comes from the projected year when all Bitcoins are expected to be mined. The organization was established to drive the development of relevant protocols to ensure Bitcoin is prepared for a post-block reward era before 2140.

2140 is currently the only organization of its kind registered in Europe. It will recruit full-time developers at its Amsterdam headquarters and provide one-year funding for newcomers.

In addition to the mentioned organizations, according to BitMEX research, over the nearly 17-year history of Bitcoin, institutions that have funded Bitcoin and Lightning Network development include Bitmain, Bitfinex, and others. Exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini have also provided grants to varying degrees, but most have not been consistent.

These funders use various funding models, some openly accept donations and redistribute them to developers, while others use corporate profits to support directly; some organizations hire developers as full-time employees with job security, while others only provide grants, as depicted in the image at the beginning of this paragraph.

The author of the report found after interviews that many developers, as a community, inevitably need to support their families, pay mortgages, and optimize resumes, making them more inclined towards an employment model. Some developers liken the grant model to "reapplying for a job every one or two years." The author notes that although funding through grants has significantly increased in recent years, there is still a need for more funding in the form of employment to retain talent. The author also mentions that the current funding structure still needs to strike a balance between non-profit organizations and companies to prevent the departure of altruistic donors and mitigate risks from a challenging market environment.

Between the lines, we can sense the delicate balance between the current developer ecosystem and funding organizations. Not all developers are just "hodling" Bitcoin out of love; the imbalance between hiring and pure funding actually causes developers to feel insecure. In the subsequent sections, we will see more evidence of this.

Regarding the financial aspect, the author states that some numbers are estimated based on public information and may not be entirely accurate. The report indicates that the total expenditure of publicly donation-funded organizations (61.5%) is almost twice that of company-funded entities (38.5%), with funding (60.8%) surpassing salaries (39.2%). The main difference comes from the total funding received by donation-funded organizations (70%), which is much higher than that received by company entities (30%), while the total salary expenditure is similar for both.

The support from donors, coupled with misalignment of resources for some purpose-driven developers, and the inadequate support from for-profit companies, is a key issue highlighted in the report. The Bitcoin community should take note of the Ethereum talent drain next door; we still need more businesses to step up and take responsibility for upholding the anchor of cryptocurrency value. The author believes that high-profit companies in the industry, such as stablecoin issuers and exchanges, should be required to provide long-term, employment-based support for Bitcoin developers and not just "take the benefits without contributing."

Where Are the Funding Organizations Located?

Out of the 13 organizations, 7 are located in North America, with 6 of them having their legal headquarters in the United States. While Blockstream is registered in Canada, it also has operational centers in the United States. It can be said that the United States covers more than half of the funding organizations and is home to the "oldest" 7 entities.

Outside of North America, except for 2140, which landed in Amsterdam, the Netherlands last year, other organizations are registered in tax havens. The reason the author listed the distribution of registration locations is to consider that differences in regulatory attitudes may affect organizational diversity, especially concerning concerns about US crackdowns on the cryptocurrency industry. However, with Trump elected as the new US president, this issue is resolved, although the author's concern about funding privacy tech development posing legal risks for donors and developers is indeed worth considering.

As for the geographical coverage of these funded organizations, it has been more or less covered in the previous sections. Brink, OpenSats, Maelstrom, Spiral, and OKX's funding is not specific to any region, while Blockstream, MIT DCI, and Chaincode primarily focus on the US and are mainly employment-based. Others are mainly focused on Europe, Africa, Latin America, with most adopting funding models.

Where Are the Developers?

A report shows that as of 2024, out of the 41 active Bitcoin Core developers whose code has been merged at least 5 times, 33 have publicly disclosed their locations.

The statistical breakdown reveals that 26 developers are located in the United States and Europe, 3 in Latin America, specifically in Argentina, Brazil, and El Salvador. The remaining four are spread across Africa, Asia (India), Australia, and Canada.

Developers from different regions also exhibit significant differences in code contributions. In the year leading up to October 2024, out of the 41 active core developers, the top 15 developers accounted for 71% of all contributions, the top 5 developers accounted for 41%, and the most active developer alone contributed 11%. Despite the United States having the most core developers, it ranks second in terms of number of commits (25%), trailing behind Europe (56%) and even with just the UK accounting for 30% of commits. Furthermore, the contribution of a single developer from Sweden amounts to half of all U.S. developers combined.

Regarding the distribution of funding organizations and developers, both the report's authors and Aaron Zhang raise a question about Asia, which holds 78% of the global population but lacks core developers apart from India. The report subtly expresses this as having "tremendous growth potential," while Aaron Zhang bluntly states that Asian developers' contribution to Bitcoin Core is nearly 0, "meaning that for a system serving a global user base, its core development circle is almost isolated from Asia."

The author believes that this is largely due to cultural differences. The open-source culture originating from Europe and the U.S. is not highly accepted in Asia, and the Asian region does not seem to have a strong "sense of freedom." Although Asia is not lacking in talent and density, it is difficult to effectively self-organize in such a decentralized community due to cultural incompatibility. However, I also believe that once such organization can develop, Asia will also have a say in Bitcoin's development path in the future.

The Mysterious "Maintainer"

The report unveils the mystery of the Bitcoin Core maintainer, a group of only 13 individuals over 10 years who have the authority to merge code into Bitcoin Core.

Currently, there are a total of 5 maintainers, and at the time of reporting, three of them are from Brink, while the other two are from Chaincode and Blockstream, respectively. Fast forward two years to the present day, although the personnel have remained the same, Ava Chow has moved from Blockstream to Localhost, and Gloria Zhao has transitioned from Brink to Chaincode.

Russ Yanofsky, sponsored by Chaincode, is one of the most active and respected long-term contributors, known for his extreme rigor, focus on code quality, and long-term maintainability. Russ Yanofsky's most famous contribution is assumeUTXO, which allows nodes to "assume" that the officially provided historical UTXO set is correct, requiring them to only validate the most recent blocks, significantly reducing the initial synchronization time for new nodes (from days to hours).

However, the idea was actually proposed by James O'Beirne, but Russ Yanofsky spent nearly 5 years refining it and finally merging it in Bitcoin Core 27.0. Currently, Russ Yanofsky is leading the effort to transition Bitcoin Core from a single-process to a multi-process architecture (enable-multi-process), greatly enhancing future security and scalability. This is an extremely complex and highly controversial refactoring project that has been ongoing for several years.

Ava Chow, who moved from Blockstream to Localhost, is a transgender female developer focusing on the practicality and security of the Bitcoin ecosystem, renowned for her contributions in the wallet functionality and hardware integration fields. Ava Chow is the primary developer of the Hardware Wallet Interface (HWI) open-source library, supporting the integration of hardware wallets such as Ledger and Trezor with Bitcoin Core.

In 2024, amidst controversy, Ava, under the pretext of "lack of consensus and noise generation," closed Luke Dashjr's PR aimed at restricting Ordinals. If you have made money on ORDI, you might want to thank her.

As the only female maintainer among the 5 maintainers and the first physiologically female individual in Bitcoin's history, Gloria Zhao focuses on research in the mempool, transaction relay, and consensus policy fields, considered a young leader (approximately 26 years old) in the Bitcoin developer community.

Gloria Zhao led the "Cluster Mempool" project (PR #30611, etc.), introducing the concept of transaction clusters, rewriting the mempool logic, and enhancing the efficiency and fairness of RBF (Replace-By-Fee) and package relay. This feature has been partially activated in Bitcoin Core v28.0, significantly improving the network's resistance to pinning attacks.

Hennadii Stepanov is a Ukrainian developer who previously worked at a university before becoming a full-time Bitcoin developer. After receiving funding from CardCoins and Payvant in 2020, he resigned and went "all in Bitcoin." Hennadii Stepanov's focus area is the GUI (Graphical User Interface) and he is responsible for the Bitcoin Core GUI sub-library, fixing multiple GUI crashes and cross-platform compatibility issues.

According to the information I looked up, this individual seems to care a lot about "user experience" and is also a key driver of Bitcoin's path to mainstream adoption. Their technical philosophy always starts from the perspective of the "end user" and they even use old laptops in testing to simulate some niche scenarios.

The final maintainer, who also has the longest tenure in office (over 6 years), is Michael Ford. He has been contributing code to Bitcoin since 2012 and was nominated to be a maintainer at the CoreDev meeting in 2019. Unlike the previous four, Michael Ford focuses on making "Bitcoin development" easier, driving Bitcoin's transformation from dependency-intensive to a modern, modular open-source project.

Michael Ford led the migration from old Autotools to modern CMake, improving cross-platform build efficiency (Windows, macOS, Linux) and reducing the number of dependencies by 44%. Additionally, he advocated for moving security checks from old tools to LIEF (Library to Instrument Executable Formats) to prevent supply chain attacks. It can be said that Michael Ford is a "developer's developer serving the Bitcoin development community."

The "Dorsey Problem" in the Funding System

The report indicates that the current funding system has two vulnerabilities, one of which is the "Dorsey Problem."

Although the current funding landscape may appear relatively decentralized, in reality, funds for 5 organizations largely or wholly come from Jack Dorsey.

· 90.5% of OpenSats' donations come from Jack;

· 14.2% of Brink's donations come from Jack;

· Btrust is entirely funded by Jack and Jay-Z;

· Jack also donated to MIT DCI's Bitcoin project, with the specific amount undisclosed but estimated to be a relatively small percentage;

· Spiral, also a project under Block where Jack serves as co-founder and CEO.

The author learned in interviews that Jack Dorsey barely interferes with the direction of donation funds, and some decisions are not even directly made by him. However, this reliance on the "Big Brother" still poses concerns. The author expressed a viewpoint similar to the author's, that more "Jack-level" donors, especially private companies benefiting from Bitcoin, should bear more responsibility in this regard. Fortunately, newly established organizations have no ties to Jack, and as reported by the author, 2 new organizations in the pipeline are also independent of Jack.

The second concern is the sustainability of donation funds. While most interviewees believe that there is currently abundant funding available for grants, the sustainability of this funding level is in question. In the bear market of 2022, MIT DCI saw a significant reduction in the $8 million donation commitment received in 2021, and donations to Brink also decreased by 58% that year. Based on the assumption of the cyclical nature of the cryptocurrency market, many organizations may opt to be cautious in their contributions during non-bull market periods to prevent fund depletion in bear markets.

Given that most products and companies in the current Web3 industry still lean towards transactions, the revenue of most companies will fluctuate with the price volatility of risk assets for a considerable amount of time in the future. A solution to this issue may require, as mentioned a third time, companies with cross-cycle profitability capacity (e.g., trading platforms) to take on the responsibility of ensuring the sustainability of donation funds at a certain level.

Asia Needs to Step Up

The report concludes by summarizing several key issues in the Bitcoin developer ecosystem: a low number of active developers, inadequate funding amounts, a concentration of funding organizations in specific jurisdictions, a gap in the Asian region, high maintainer concentration (in 2024, three maintainers belonged to the same company, but this issue has since improved), scarce employment opportunities (most funding still takes the form of grants), fund source concentration, and fragile sustainability.

In the context of the Chinese-speaking Web3 community's lack of presence in Bitcoin development, the author analyzed the reasons in the article. In fact, there are numerous excellent developers in China, but merely shouting slogans is not enough. What is needed is for an individual or organization to step forward to take on this task in order to truly address this issue.

Many people may be concerned about regulatory issues, especially given the recent release of multiple regulatory documents, which has further heightened anxiety. However, what the author wants to point out is that in the current complex international competition, particularly against the backdrop of major power games, strengthening regulation of cryptocurrency is essentially activating the classic "idiot-proof mechanism." This is to prevent a large number of fraud cases and capital outflows during a period when the economy is no longer growing rapidly. However, this does not prevent non-governmental organizations in the industry from striving for our say in Bitcoin.

Upon reading the report from start to finish, it is fortunate to see that over the past decade, a large number of talented and dedicated technologists have continuously dedicated themselves to the improvement and maintenance of Bitcoin. There are also bosses who keep sending rocket emojis to support these developers. This seemingly inadequate support has allowed Bitcoin to become the representative of a new asset class in less than 20 years, which can be called a "miracle."

What is worrisome, however, is precisely that "this is a miracle."

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