How HRF helped fund Bitcoin’s public-goods stack — across wallets, privacy, infrastructure, education, and open-source tools worldwide.
In June 2020, the Human Rights Foundation made a bet.
One grant. One developer. One idea: a technique called CoinSwap that would help people defeat financial surveillance.
His name was Chris Belcher.
Two months later, Round 2. Three more grants: Zeus for Lightning node control, Fully Noded for mobile full-node access, and Openoms's JoinInbox for a graphical JoinMarket interface.
The first 1 BTC grants to individual developers building tools people would actually use on their phones.
Through 2021, a thesis emerged. This wasn't charity. It was infrastructure investment.
Wallets for Nigeria. Lightning privacy for everyone. Bitcoin Core security. Arabic-language education. A mesh-networking protocol for people with no internet at all.
Round 7 changed everything.
Thirteen grants in one round — more than double any before it. Five were education: fellowships, Lightning training, privacy workshops.
HRF wasn't just funding code anymore. It was funding people who would write the code next.
2022: mining grants, infrastructure builds, the first ecash project. 2023: nostr appears — a new protocol for censorship-resistant communication.
By Round 14, the fund had backed over 100 projects across more than 30 countries.
BTCPay Server received four grants across multiple rounds. Summer of Bitcoin trained cohorts who then received their own grants. Bitshala in India. Africa Bitcoin Conference.
Grantees became mentors. Students became builders. The fund was compounding.
307 grants. 248 unique recipients. 24 rounds. Every continent except Antarctica.
The largest category? Education — 93 grants, nearly a third of the total. HRF bet that teaching people to build would compound.
The early rounds were pure cypherpunk: privacy tools, Lightning infrastructure, Core contributions.
Over time, education scaled. Payments became a top category. Community organizations sprouted across the Global South. Nostr and ecash emerged as new vectors for freedom.
The fund didn't just react to the ecosystem. It helped shape it.
Round 24. April 2026. Twenty-six new grants.
Eight education projects. Five payment tools. Three wallets. Spanning Afghanistan to West Africa to Southeast Asia.
The fund keeps moving — toward the places and people who need these tools most.
Explore the full dataset below — every project, every developer, every round. Or help write the next chapter.
Filter, sort, and explore all 307 grants
| Round | Date | Recipient | Project | Category | Region | Location |
|---|