Human Rights Foundation Awards $590K in Bitcoin Grants to 20 Global Projects

The Human Rights Foundation recently announced their newest recipients of grants through their Bitcoin Development Fund.

The foundation is distributing a total of 10 BTC approximately $590,000 at the time of writing across 20 different projects worldwide. Projects include educating citizens living under oppressive governments, funding Bitcoin development events, decentralizing mining operations, and equipping human rights groups with better, privacy-focused financial tools. The main areas where these grants will be dispersed include Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

20 Projects to Share 10 BTC Grant for Bitcoin Development

Regarding the Bitcoin Development Fund and even though the Human Rights Foundation has not said how much will go to each of the projects, here is a list of 20 projects that are set to share the 10 BTC/1 billion satoshis in funding:

African Bitcoiners: Onboarding Africans into Bitcoin, the class for beginners, free Lightning payment processing for merchants, and airdrop buying with data/airtime. Funds will be put into creating education and operational costs such as salaries and infrastructure.

Stratospher: A Bitcoin Core developer who helps in increasing the level of privacy and decentralization of the Bitcoin protocol will use the money in the following ways: Peer Review/ P2P privacy, perform critical code reviews, and mentor new developers.

Coracle is a Nostr-based web client that’s working to create a decentralized social media system. The update focuses on Shareable feeds, Enhanced Privacy for direct messaging, and encrypted communities, etc. The grant will pay for one developer full-time.

Harbor – An open-source Bitcoin wallet building better financial privacy, from Ben Carman and Paul Miller. This grant will, according to the Human Rights Foundation, support the development of Harbour’s 1.0 production release, which will include things such as multiple mints, and Tor integration.

The 256 Foundation: This is a grant supporting the Bitaxe project, which is developing the means for anybody to mine Bitcoin in private. Funds will go toward continuing to develop Bitaxe so that users living under oppressive regimes can safely mine Bitcoin.

Kiveclair: Based in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this community fosters Bitcoin education via meetups, activist training, and local conferences. The grant money will be used to pay for educational tools and equipment, as well as venue rental.

Empowering Human Rights with Bitcoin Development Fund

Jeff Gardner: Developing Nostr direct and group messages with end-to-end encryption to provide activists with secure communication channels. This funding will be used for further development, a community bounty, and a security audit.

Silentium: A privacy-centric Bitcoin wallet that integrates Silent Payments, enabling activists to receive Bitcoin in the most private manner possible. The grant will cover infrastructure costs, including a cloud node and web server, as well as a developer.

BTC Shule is an education project that will teach the ins and outs of Bitcoin in Kirundi and French to the population of Burundi. There will be a physical center where meetups can be organized and a supporting community through Whatsapp and Telegram. Funds will go directly to platform development and constructing the center.

EttaWallet: A self-custodial Lightning wallet focused on increasing ease of use for users of the Global South. The grant will be used for further wallet development, localization, and growing its user base.

Tor Relay Operators: The Tor network needs to expand in number and stability. This network is extremely pivotal to human rights and Bitcoin activists. Grant funding will be put toward deploying more Tor nodes as a means of increasing the reliability of the network.

Rikto Xonghoti: A Bitcoin education initiative in Assam, India, to enable a Bitcoin economy there. Funds will be, according to the Human Rights Foundation, utilized in setting up a Bitcoin center, salaries of the teachers, and equipment purchases.

Yes Bitcoin Haiti: It is a grassroots movement aiming at empowering Haitians through education in Bitcoin. Its leaders, led by the translation of educational materials into Haitian Creole, will run this workshop. Salaries and equipment are paid for with this grant.

Bitcoin Indonesia: The project focuses on building a local Bitcoin community and educational platform in Bahasa Indonesia. As such, funding will go into producing content and supporting the operations.
Bitcoin++: A series of conferences for developers featuring in-depth workshops on Bitcoin technology for developers. Funds will go to pay travel costs for developers from authoritarian countries to attend the upcoming eCash conference in Berlin.

TABConf: A conference in Atlanta that brings together collaboration amongst Bitcoin developers. This grant will fund the event and allow travel for those attendees who need financial aid to attend.

Baltic Honeybadger: The world’s first nonprofit Bitcoin-only conference. Funds allow human rights activists in attendance to explore Bitcoin as a tool to protect financial freedoms.

LaBitconf and Descentralizar are two conferences in Argentina that position Bitcoin as a tool for financial freedom. Travel expenses for developers and speakers will be compensated, as will the logistics required to execute these two conferences.

Satsconf: Largest Bitcoin Conference in Brazil, linking local communities to the leaders around the world who are building Bitcoin. Funds will be used to pay for event logistics, speaker travel, and a hackathon. Also, let’s just add that after Brazil approved two spot Solana ETFs, Matthew Sigel, head of research at VanEck, commented that the US might need a regulatory “soft fork” before a Solana ETF is approved.

Solidarity Summit: The event is held in Vienna and will unite the community of former political prisoners, activists, and human rights defenders. The grant will be spent on event logistics and making a documentary to raise awareness.

HRF is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that works for human rights in closed societies and continues to grow its Bitcoin Development Fund. Anyone willing to donate can now contribute Bitcoin, while applications for future grants are also open.

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