20 BTC to Champion Financial Freedom: Human Rights Foundation’s Global Initiative

• The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) has initiated a bug bounty challenge, rewarding 20 Bitcoin (BTC), to motivate open-source development on the Bitcoin system.
• The bounty program focuses on six key areas, including enhancing mobile wallets and supporting the Nostr development.

In a path-breaking initiative, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is harnessing the power of the Bitcoin ecosystem to advance global financial freedom. The foundation has recently launched a bug bounty challenge, with a remarkable reward of 20 Bitcoin (BTC), approximately worth $589K at the time of writing, to stimulate open-source innovation within the Bitcoin infrastructure.

Unleashing Potential with the Bitcoin Bug Bounty

The primary focus of the challenge is the optimization of the Bitcoin user experience. Out of the total reward, six bounties, each worth 2 BTC, are designated specifically for enhancing mobile wallets. Each bounty aims to resolve distinct issues currently faced by the Bitcoin system, a decentralized digital currency without a central bank or single administrator, allowing peer-to-peer transactions on the network.

These meticulously crafted bounties are conceived following insightful discussions with international activists and reflect features that many stakeholders want to see incorporated into Bitcoin. These are financially backed by the HRF’s Bitcoin Development Fund, a branch dedicated to expanding financial freedom.

Among the targeted features, one bounty aims to create the ability for users to produce and memorize seed phrases during border crossings, a common practice among privacy-conscious Bitcoin users. Another goal is to spur Nostr development, an open-source and censorship-resistant social network that has been gaining notable attention, particularly among tech-savvy cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Nostr is backed by Twitter’s co-founder, Jack Dorsey, making it an interesting area for bounty hunters. Further, the bounties focus on developing open-source design components for Bitcoin projects.

Recognizing the pivotal role Bitcoin can play in promoting financial freedom, the HRF is aiming to leverage its decentralized, peer-to-peer nature to enable human rights advocates to persist in their endeavours. These bug bounties, therefore, represent a critical component of the global fight for human rights. The deadline for submissions extends until the end of 2024, allowing ample time for developers worldwide to contribute.

In a similar vein, this is not the HRF’s first foray into Bitcoin bug bounties. The organization has previously collaborated with the Lightning Network payments platform Strike in December 2021 for an analogous initiative, demonstrating the HRF’s ongoing commitment to improving Bitcoin’s usability, privacy, and security.

By engaging open-source developers with this bounty challenge, the HRF continues its support for enhancing Bitcoin and other digital tools, shedding light on the interplay between blockchain technology and the fight for human rights worldwide.