Companies that contribute to the development of Bitcoin by financing developers

BitMEX recently published a report on the most important companies contributing to the development of Bitcoin. The analysis has two aspects – the number of developers employed by the companies and how they are financed.

According to BitMEX, there are sixteen companies that have employees dedicated to developing the Bitcoin code. The most important are Blockstream and Lightning Labs with eight developers, Square Crypto with 7, MIT University Digital Currency Initiative, Purse and Chaincode with 6 employees. Other companies that have dedicated employees are DG Labs, OKcoin, Bitfinex and Xapo.

For example, Blockstream has two dedicated Bitcoin developers, three Lightning developers and three cryptocurrencies. For its part, Lightning Labs has at least eight developers working on Lightning open-source software – Bitcoin’s second-layer scaling solution.

BitMEX noted that the number of developers employed is not “a perfect indicator of the overall contribution of the funder”. In some cases, developers may be employed full time, while others work only part time.

Companies that contribute to the development of Bitcoin by financing developers

For this reason, the company also conducted an analysis of the most active contributors to the Bitcoin code, identifying 33 of them. Later, he tried to identify how they are funded. According to the report, one third of them are self-financing (11 developers).

Chaincode seems to be most interested in financing Bitcoin developers, paying 7 of them. The company is followed by Blockstream, MIT and Square Crypto, founded by Jack Dorsey.

The conclusion of the BitMEX report was that the funding for Bitcoin development was in good standing:

“We conclude that the situation is healthier than it was in the past, in terms of availability of finance, transparency and the degree of distribution among the financiers”,

is shown in the report.

Very important to remember is that the implementation of the improvements brought by the developers needs the vote of the community! No protocol modification is possible without community acceptance!