Ben Allen has been named the third recipient of the Maelstrom Bitcoin Developer Grant, the household workplace of Arthur Hayes introduced in a current press launch despatched to Bitcoin Journal. Over the subsequent yr, Allen will concentrate on enhancing the Payjoin Dev Equipment undertaking, a privacy-focused Bitcoin transaction software designed to enhance person anonymity and community scalability.
Payjoin, first launched in 2019 by Nicolas Dorier in BIP 78, permits each the sender and receiver to contribute inputs to a single Bitcoin transaction. This disrupts frequent assumptions utilized by monetary surveillance companies, particularly the concept that a number of transaction inputs should come from a single entity. By breaking this assumption, even restricted adoption of Payjoin can bolster privateness throughout the Bitcoin community.
“Maelstrom would like to congratulate Ben Allen on this grant,” stated Arthur Hayes, Chief Funding Officer of Maelstrom. “The great thing about Payjoin, is that if only a small amount of adoption is achieved, it breaks a key assumption used by financial surveillance companies. The assumption they have is that if a Bitcoin transaction has multiple inputs, all the inputs must all belong to the same entity. Therefore, Payjoin adoption improves the privacy of even the people who don’t use it. We are excited to support Ben Allen’s work on open-source tools and software to increase Payjoin adoption.”
Allen, who might be working alongside Dan Gould, goals to broaden the implementation of Payjoin so it may be built-in into extra Bitcoin wallets. He acknowledged the technical complexities of the undertaking—together with the requirement for receivers to be on-line—however expressed optimism about overcoming these challenges.
“I’m deeply grateful to Arthur Hayes and Maelstrom for generously providing me with this grant to support my work on the Payjoin Dev Kit project,” stated Allen. “With this funding, I can dedicate myself full-time to enhancing the Payjoin implementation, improving testing, and ensuring that the dev kit remains robust, well-documented, and maintainable for the future.”
Allen additionally emphasised the broader mission of his work: “Improving privacy for bitcoin is an area where continued improvement allows for a better experience by empowering users to control their financial data and foster greater peace of mind when using bitcoin day to day. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to Bitcoin’s privacy and scalability, and I’m looking forward to continuing to collaborate with the community to make Payjoin more widely adopted.”
Maelstrom, which is targeted on supporting digital asset infrastructure, is led by Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX. By way of grants like this one, the agency is investing within the foundational instruments that promote a extra personal, scalable, and decentralized Bitcoin ecosystem.
