Bitcoin Development Fund | Human Rights Foundation

What we fund

HRF funds the work that makes Bitcoin censorship-resistant, unfreezable, and usable by people whose governments would rather they were not. Every grant is a bet on freedom. The fund operates in three categories, with grant amounts quoted in satoshis alongside USD.

Open-source software development — protocol clients, wallets, privacy primitives, and the infrastructure dissidents depend on
Bitcoin research and educational initiatives — translations, training, and documentation for activists in non-English-speaking regions
Financial privacy — tooling that protects the 6.2 billion people living under authoritarian regimes from financial surveillance

What we're working on

Privacy primitives — coinjoin, Lightning privacy, payjoin
Decentralization — protocol clients, mining decentralization, node distribution
Censorship resistance for activists in closed societies
Self-custody and key management for high-risk users
Wallet UX for low-bandwidth and adversarial environments
Open-source translations and educational materials in languages including Shona, Spanish, Arabic, and Russian

How grants work

HRF reviews applications quarterly. We award grants in rounds, denominated in satoshis (with USD equivalents). Most awards run six to twelve months. After each round, HRF publishes a public summary of the projects funded, the recipients, and the impact.

Apply now

Recent grant rounds

HRF announces every Bitcoin Development Fund round publicly at hrf.org, naming recipients, satoshi amounts, and impact. Past rounds have included grants of 1.5 billion and 2 billion satoshis to projects worldwide. Recipients have included Bitcoin educators in southern Africa, Lightning privacy researchers, and developers of self-custody tooling for activists at risk.

See past grant rounds