Bitcoin Core Development
Learn more about what our team members do for Bitcoin Core development
On January 8 2009, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto released v0.1 of Bitcoin:
"Announcing the first release of Bitcoin, a new electronic cash system that uses a peer-to-peer network to prevent double-spending. It's completely decentralized with no server or central authority."
Satoshi's proof-of-concept code, now called Bitcoin Core, has been maintained and updated ever since. To this day it continues to be the de-facto reference implementation of the Bitcoin protocol and remains the backbone of the Bitcoin network.
The DCI was formed in 2015 in order to provide a stable and sustainable funding for long-term Bitcoin Core developers. Though it has grown substantially since then, one of the DCI's primary missions continues to be contributing to the success of Bitcoin by supporting Bitcoin Core developers. As the DCI has grown, we have invited other respected Bitcoin Core developers to join in and work alongside us.
DCI-funded developers have helped with the production and successful deployment of dozens of versions of Bitcoin Core, each bringing optimizations, usability improvements and security upgrades. As part of that work, we also necessarily contribute to several other software projects in the cryptocurrency space as well as other useful open-source projects used in the ecosystem.
Our developers are seasoned contributors who tend to focus on meaningful architectural work such as:
Peer-to-peer performance, hardening, and maintainability
Continuous-Integration infrastructure
Modernization and modularization of the codebase
Fuzz testing
The libbitcoinkernel project
Release and code-signing processes
Build-systems and compiler tooling
Though Bitcoin Core is known for being extremely stable and robust against attacks, DCI developers have been involved in the discovery, disclosure, and/or mitigation of several critical Bitcoin bugs including:
We have also been key participants in the evolution of the underlying Bitcoin Protocol, helping to usher in network upgrades such as CheckLockTimeVerify, CheckSequenceVerify, Segregated Witness, and Taproot.
Donations to the DCI's Bitcoin Development Fund help to ensure these developers have a neutral and sustainable home for their open-source contributions.
People:
Cory Fields (@theuni), MIT Digital Currency Initiative
Marco Falke (@maflcko), MIT Digital Currency Initiative
AJ Towns (@ajtowns), MIT Digital Currency Initiative
Wladimir van der Laan (@laanwj), MIT Digital Currency Initiative
Sebastian Kung (@TheCharlatan), MIT Digital Currency Initiative
Dr. Neha Narula (@narula), MIT Digital Currency Initiative
Outputs:
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