Square Crypto offers grant to pseudonymous Bitcoin developer

Square Crypto, payments company Square’s crypto initiative, has announced that it is giving a grant to a part-time Lightning Network developer who goes by the name “ZmnSCPxj” in order to support his work.

ZmnSCPxj is known for his posts on the lightning-development email lists. He has been providing detailed analyses of existing proposals and writing up comprehensive proposals of his own, according to Square Crypto’s tweets. The grant is meant to help him quit his day job and conduct Lightning and Bitcoin work on a full-time basis.

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“In a move that could never happen in any other space, we’re supplying a grant to what looks at first glance like a hash function,” Square Crypto announced on Twitter.

“We don’t actually know where ZmnSCPxj lives, apart from somewhere in the GMT+8 timezone, which includes China, Brunei, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore,” the company said. “That’s it. That’s all he told us and that’s all we know.”

In September, Square Crypto provided a $100k grant to the BTCPay Foundation, the non-profit organization behind BTCPayer Server. Its new grant to ZmnSCPxj shows the company’s increased interest in supporting the bitcoin developer community.

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Yilun joined The Block in November 2019. She has a policy background and extensive experience in reporting and writing. She has worked on stories ranging from business to politics.