BitMEX awards two more grants to developers working on the Bitcoin protocol

BitMEX, the popular crypto derivatives trading platform, today awarded its latest two Open Source Developer grants to Rene Pickhardt and Chris Coverdale.


Rene’s work focuses on improving the reliability of the payment process and minimum cost flow solvers for optimal payment flows. Chris is working on building an implementation of the Stratum V2 Bitcoin mining pool protocol with more efficient data transfer.


These grants will help fund their contribution to the lightning network and implementation of the Stratum V2 Bitcoin mining pool protocol, respectively. BitMEX has extended an eight-month grant of USD $33,333 of committed funding to each, which will last through the end of the 2021 program’s term (May 2022).


More than USD $1.5M has been awarded in BitMEX’s developer Grant Program since 2019.


With the two new grantees, BitMEX currently supports six open source Bitcoin developers with no-strings-attached grants:



  • Bitcoin Core maintainer Michael Ford who has been with BitMEX for three years;

  • Gleb Naumenko who joined the program in June 2020;

  • Utreexo developer Calvin Kim, who joined the program in August 2020; and

  • Bitcoin Core developer Sjors Provoost, who joined the program in August 2021


Note, the application process for the 2021 Grant Program has now closed. Details of the 2022 Grant Program will be announced in due course.

Source: BitMEX