The cryptocurrency development arm of payments firm Square, Square Crypto, has funded a pseudonymous Bitcoin developer, ZmnSCPxj, known for his work on BTC’s layer-two scaling solution, the Lightning Network.
The amount of the grant wasn’t disclosed, but Square Crypto’s tweets implied ZmnSCPxj had been working on Bitcoin’s scaling solution part-time and will now be able to “leave behind his day job of 14 years” to work full-time on both Bitcoin and Lightning.
ZmnSCPxj has been a part-time contributor to Lightning and C-Lightning for two years. With this grant, he’ll be able to leave behind his day job of 14 years and go full-time on Lightning and bitcoin. This is the first financial support he’s received for his bitcoin work.
— Square Crypto (@sqcrypto) December 11, 2019
The developers is well known for his work on both Lightning Labs and c-Lighting implementations over the past two years, and Square added that it isn’t clear where he lives exactly, only that it’s “somewhere in the GMT +8 timezone, which includes China, Brunei, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore.”
While most claim ZmnSCPxj has managed to remain anonymous and only be known through his code, some point out Lightning developers know who he is as he attended October’s Lightning Conference in Berlin, giving a presentation during the conference.
Via his website, he has also been accepting bitcoin donations since 2018. Square Crypto has, as CryptoGlobe covered, hired legendary Bitcoin developer Matt Corallo earlier this year, and revealed Square was looking to hire 3-4 cryptocurrency engineers to work “full-time on open source contributions to the bitcoin/crypto ecosystem.”
Square has also been a significant on-ramp to the cryptocurrency space. In November it was revealed that during the third quarter of this year first-time bitcoin buyers on its Cash app “approximately doubled”, partly thanks to an improved layout.
Featured image by Jason Appleton from Pexels.
