A research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology creates a special fund to help bitcoin core developers Wladimir van der Laan, Gavin Andresen and Cory Fields in their advancement of the technology.

The fund aims to support bitcoin protocol development in a neutral and open environment. As the official press release reads,

“the goal of the fund is to cover salaries, travel and overall support of Bitcoin protocol development efforts, including events like the Scaling Bitcoin workshop series.”

To date, the fund has raised $900,000. The list of donors includes such companies as BitFury, Bitmain, Chain, Circle, Nasdaq and some individuals – Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder), Jim Breyer (CEO of Breyer Capital), Jim Pallotta (investor and hedge fund manager), Jeff Tarrant (CEO at Protege Partners), and Fred Wilson (co-founder of Union Square Ventures).

As a precedent, in April 2015, MIT Media Lab launched the Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) that funded salaries and other expenses for van der Laan, Andresen and Fields for a year, allowing them to work on bitcoin development in an unbiased academic environment without any stakeholders’ constraints.

Announcing the creation of the new fund, MIT Media Labs publicly names the donors, emphasises that these sponsors do not influence the work of developers and offers to answer any questions people may have about the initiative.

The press release states that the fund is ready to support other developers who can support their claim with serious reasons. However, MIT Media Labs calls other universities to contribute to supporting bitcoin developers so as to consolidate them in a single integrated community.

The fund is supposed to work as long as it will be demanded by the developers and supported by investors. While currently the fund supports specifically bitcoin developers, its representatives do not exclude the possibility to create a separate financing body to back the open-source development of other virtual currencies.

MIT Media Lab insists it does not intend in any way to control the work of developers. Even concerning the block size debate, MIT opts for the diversity of ideas in the bitcoin universe however controversial they may be. As Brian Forde, DCI head, explained in an interview,

“The goal of the new fund is to let them develop the bitcoin protocol without agenda-setting.”

MIT traditionally favours bitcoin and blockchain projects. In December 2015, MIT announced the launch of a new blockchain platform in beta which provides access to stored private data.

Anna Lavinskaya