Original Title: Funding a $1.2 Trillion Dollar Project

Original Authors: Dan O'Prey, Mas Nakachi, 1A1z

Original Compiler: Eric, Foresight News

How many developers does a company with a market value of $2 trillion need? What are the development costs?

According to public data, among the companies listed on the US stock market with a market value exceeding $2 trillion, the number of technical or development personnel ranges from a few thousand to tens of thousands, with annual salary expenditures reaching hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.

For Bitcoin, which once reached a market value of $2.5 trillion and still has a market value of nearly $1.75 trillion today, these two numbers are $41 and $840 million, respectively. Yes, this absolute "big brother" in the cryptocurrency field has only 41 core developers in its core development organization, and they are supported by a few million dollars in donations and salaries from a handful of companies each year.

1A1z conducted dozens of hours of interviews and research, releasing a report that reveals the mysterious team behind Bitcoin, Bitcoin Core, and its sponsors. This report, published last October, showcases the full picture of Bitcoin's development team and donors for 2023 and 2024. Although it may seem slightly outdated, the changes in Bitcoin's developer system occur on an annual basis, and even today, it remains almost unchanged from the time of the report's investigation.

The purpose of this report is to inform participants that Bitcoin is still "fragile" to some extent while the world focuses on its price. As possibly the only truly decentralized project, each of us can contribute to it. Thanks to X user Aaron Zhang for interpreting the report and providing the latest information for 2025.

The World's Most Efficient Distributed Team

The first chart of the report illustrates the difference between Bitcoin and technology companies with similar market values:

In 2023, Meta had at least 20,000 developers, with a market value of about $1.5 trillion, while Bitcoin, with a market value of $1.2 trillion during the same period, had only 41 people. These 41 developers contribute code to Bitcoin Core, commonly referred to as Bitcoin core developers. Among the 41 core developers, there are 5 special maintainers who are currently the only five people in the world authorized to merge improvement proposals from core developers into Bitcoin Core.

It is worth noting that only 13 people have held this position in the past decade, and we will discuss the stories of these 13 individuals later.

If you think Bitcoin and publicly listed companies are incomparable, the report also compares it with Web3 projects. Taking Polkadot as an example, in 2023, Polkadot's spending on core developers reached $7 million, but its market value was only 1.2% of Bitcoin's. In 2024, Polkadot's spending on activities similar to Bitcoin development reached $16.8 million. Meanwhile, Ethereum's spending on core developers was approximately $32.3 million in 2023 and $50 million in 2024.

The number of people contributing to Bitcoin's code is certainly not limited to these 41 individuals. The figures provided in the report only cover those who directly contribute code to Bitcoin Core, excluding testing engineers, researchers, and others, as well as protocols like the Lightning Network and Nostr. Even the libsecp256k1 library, which is closely related to Bitcoin Core, is not included in the calculations.

The numerical "contrast" indeed reflects Bitcoin's strong "anti-fragility." Bitcoin lacks the standard foundation organizations that other projects have, resulting in its inability to secure funding and allocate resources like other projects. However, the author believes that this very fact allows Bitcoin to avoid reliance on a single entity for decision-making and prevents issues of fund misuse, ensuring that every penny is spent wisely: "Bitcoin's resolute resistance to any form of centralization or single point of failure is what makes it unique, and it is the only way we believe Bitcoin can succeed."

The author once asked a question during an early interview with an investment institution: given that the efficiency of decentralized DAOs in Web3 projects is so low, and it is often difficult to reach consensus on simple matters, what is the inherent value of such a system? The response was that inefficiency is one of the operational modes of this system, as achieving broad consensus on a matter cannot be efficient. This seemingly mindless inefficiency of "democracy" is precisely where its value lies.

At this point, you might think the report itself resembles a "hymn" to Bitcoin. Perhaps these data reflect some resilience of Bitcoin, but this resilience is, to some extent, a helpless choice under a high degree of decentralization. In other words, as stated at the beginning, Bitcoin Core is fragile, and our attention and investment in this trillion-dollar empire that has allowed many to leap across classes overnight are still insufficient.

Who is Funding Bitcoin Core Developers?

The authors of the report made a strict distinction between sponsors and donors. To explain the difference, I believe that sponsors are more inclined to execution, such as ensuring that funds are allocated to designated developers, while donors play the role of "financial backers."

Before delving into these organizations that selflessly contribute to Bitcoin's development, let me first present a chart to avoid overwhelming you.

The report lists 13 major sponsoring organizations, which must directly employ Bitcoin core developers or have ongoing direct funding programs aimed at core developers. "One-time" funding or non-continuous funding plans are not included.

Blockstream

Blockstream was founded by early Bitcoin core developers and has contributed a significant amount of code to Bitcoin Core and libsecp256k1. However, due to its corporate identity, it has faced skepticism about its potential influence on Bitcoin for its own interests. Currently, Blockstream employs only one core developer. Since 2014, Blockstream has disclosed six rounds of funding totaling at least $510 million, resembling "ConsenSys in the Bitcoin ecosystem."

Adam Back, co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, is regarded as "one of the closest people to Satoshi Nakamoto." His Hashcash proof-of-work system, proposed in 1997 to combat spam, served as the prototype for Bitcoin's PoW consensus mechanism. Satoshi Nakamoto referenced Adam Back's work in the Bitcoin white paper and communicated with him via email regarding technical details. After founding Blockstream, Adam Back also led the development of Bitcoin sidechain Liquid and scalability and privacy components like the Lightning Network.

Chaincode Labs

Chaincode Labs was founded in 2014 in Manhattan, New York, by Alex Morcos and Suhas Daftuar. Alex Morcos initially focused on automated trading and quantitative trading and became a Bitcoin core developer in 2012. He remains an active contributor to the Bitcoin Core development community. Suhas Daftuar also worked in trading-related roles before entering the Web3 industry and co-founded Hudson River Trading LLC (HRT). Both are pioneers in algorithmic trading on Wall Street.

Chaincode Labs promotes the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem through self-funding, including enhancing the reliability and scalability of the Bitcoin protocol; developing tutorials and funding projects to cultivate Bitcoin developers; and conducting cutting-edge research, including potential threats from quantum computing to Bitcoin. Chaincode Labs released the "Bitcoin Post-Quantum" report this year, proposing a migration path based on NIST post-quantum encryption standards, including introducing new signature schemes (such as Dilithium or Falcon) through soft forks, expected to be implemented in phases from 2026 to 2028.

Chaincode Labs is also a key driver behind significant upgrades to the Bitcoin network, such as Taproot and SegWit, and was one of the sponsors of the first independent third-party audit of Bitcoin Core.

It is worth mentioning that Aaron Zhang, previously mentioned, announced on X on the 3rd of this month (https://x.com/zzmjxy/status/1996092229962916119) that he has become the China partner for the Chaincode Labs BOSS (Bitcoin Open Source Software) Challenge. The BOSS Challenge is a free 30-day coding challenge combined with a 2-month practical period to help developers enter open-source projects. It has already helped dozens of developers start from scratch and become full-time open-source engineers.

Digital Currency Initiative

The Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) cannot strictly be considered an organization; it was launched by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2015 as a neutral academic vehicle to support core developers after the Bitcoin Foundation was dissolved. MIT DCI accepts donations for the long-term employment of Bitcoin developers, providing stable salaries and research environments, allowing them to focus on protocol security, performance, and consensus improvements, producing academic papers, open-source code, and public reports, and participating in central bank digital currency (CBDC) research in collaboration with the Boston Federal Reserve Bank on Project Hamilton.

DCI emphasizes open-source, self-custody, and privacy protection principles, aiming to demonstrate the value of decentralized technology to policymakers while maintaining independent contributions to the Bitcoin Core codebase.

Spiral

Spiral is an independent Bitcoin development entity under Block (formerly Square), established in 2019 (initially named Square Crypto) and officially renamed Spiral in January 2022. By December 2025, Spiral had funded over 100 open-source projects, investing hundreds of millions of dollars to promote improvements in Bitcoin's privacy, security, scalability, and user experience (UX). Spiral emphasizes independence, not being directly controlled by Block or its founder Jack Dorsey, but driven by the Bitcoin developer community.

The current head of Spiral is former Google engineer Steve Lee, and the team includes former Bitcoin Core maintainers and Lightning Labs engineers. According to public information, although Spiral's funding scope is broad, its core focus is on the Lightning Network, hoping to enhance Bitcoin's payment efficiency through the Lightning Network, which aligns with Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision.

OKX

This one needs no introduction. What is worth mentioning is that OKX's funding program began with OKCoin in 2019 and has since been taken over by OKX, now primarily driven by executives Lennix Lai and Hong Fang. OKX currently supports key developers such as Amiti Uttarwar and Marco Falke, as well as other organizations funding Bitcoin Core, such as Brink, Vinteum, and 2140, which we will discuss shortly.

Human Rights Foundation

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) was established in the United States in 2005 to promote and protect human rights in closed societies worldwide, focusing on combating dictatorship, authoritarian governments, and tyranny. HRF has long supported Sakharov Prize and Havel Prize winners, as well as well-known dissidents like Liu Xiaobo, Alexei Navalny, and Kim Jong-nam. It has funded thousands of grassroots human rights projects in over 70 countries.

Since 2019, HRF has regarded Bitcoin as one of the most important "human rights technologies" of the 21st century, believing it to be a powerful tool against financial surveillance, oppression, and monetary tyranny. In May 2019, HRF established the HRF Bitcoin Development Fund to fund open-source development of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, having donated over 120 Bitcoins to date.

Brink

Brink is a non-profit organization co-founded by Mike Schmidt and former Chaincode Labs developer John Newbery in 2020, aiming to cultivate and support a new generation of Bitcoin protocol developers through full-time salary funding, mentorship training, and community building, addressing the "succession crisis" in Bitcoin core development.

Brink selects 4 to 6 promising engineers each year, providing 1 to 2 years of full-time salary (approximately $120,000 to $180,000 per year) to allow them to contribute full-time to Bitcoin Core and related protocols. To date, it has funded over 20 developers, including notable figures such as Gloria Zhao (now a Bitcoin Core maintainer), Greg Sanders, and Josie Baker. Brink is currently the most recognized "incubator for Bitcoin core developers" in the community, with nearly all newcomers who joined the Bitcoin Core maintainer team after 2022 having received funding or training from Brink.

Brink's operational funding comes 100% from donations, with donors including Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, the previously mentioned Chaincode Labs, HRF, Spiral, as well as trading platforms like Gemini, Bitfinex, Kraken, and hundreds of individual donors.

Btrust

Btrust was established in 2021, co-funded by Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z with 500 Bitcoins, headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, focusing on promoting the participation of African and Indian developers in Bitcoin and Lightning Network open-source development through education and funding. By December 2025, Btrust has trained hundreds of African developers and funded over 50 open-source projects. Btrust acquired the African Bitcoin developer training program Qala early on and integrated it into the Btrust Builders Fellowship.

Btrust acts as Bitcoin's "African operations center," providing training and funding while also hosting BitDev events in major African cities and maintaining weekly Bitcoin ecosystem updates for the African community.

In September 2024, Nigerian Bitcoin core developer Abubakar Nur Khalil was appointed as the interim CEO of the organization. He is a co-founder of Qala, which was acquired by Btrust. In addition to this role, Abubakar Nur Khalil has been one of Bitcoin's core developers since 2020 and has also provided insights on the development of the African Bitcoin ecosystem for Forbes, focusing on macro trends in investment. Additionally, he is a founding partner of Recursive Capital.

OpenSats

OpenSats was established in 2020 by the Bitcoin open-source community, with key promoters including Lightning Labs co-founder Elizabeth Stark. The establishment of OpenSats largely stemmed from concerns in 2020 about the stagnation of Bitcoin protocol development and maintenance due to a shortage of funding for developers. Since its inception, OpenSats has focused its funding not only on Bitcoin core developers but also on a wide range of open-source projects surrounding Bitcoin, including Nostr and lightweight full nodes. Over the past five years, OpenSats has provided approximately $30 million in funding to over 330 contributors.

Vinteum

Vinteum was founded in August 2022 by Bitcoin core contributors Lucas Ferreira and former Brink developer Bruno Ely Garcia, aiming to support Bitcoin ecosystem builders in Brazil and Latin America.

Vinteum can be seen as a product of the "developer diversification" wave in Bitcoin in 2022. To date, it has funded over 20 developers to become full-time open-source project developers, contributing to the review, testing, and improvement of the Taproot upgrade. The 2025 report indicates that its projects account for over 15% of Bitcoin contributions in Latin America. Additionally, Vinteum is committed to promoting Bitcoin adoption against the backdrop of high inflation in Brazil.

Maelstrom

Maelstrom is a Bitcoin-focused venture capital fund led by the family office of BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes. Maelstrom primarily focuses on investment and has established a "Bitcoin Grant Program." According to information on its official website, the fund currently provides funding for four full-time developers, involving projects related to Bitcoin privacy tools like Payjoin, Silent Payments, and peer-to-peer network privacy.

Previously, Maelstrom funded the Nostr protocol and client ecosystem, Fedimint ecosystem, and sponsored Chaincode's BOSS Challenge this year. Additionally, in the third quarter of this year, Maelstrom launched the Bitcoin Moonshot Grants program, specifically designed for "crazy-sounding but potentially game-changing" high-risk, high-potential Bitcoin projects, emphasizing radical innovation. As of December 2025, this program has funded 5 to 10 early-stage projects, with a total investment of approximately $20 million to $30 million.

B4OS (Bitcoin For Open Source)

B4OS was launched in April 2024 by the Spanish-speaking Bitcoin learning community Librería de Satoshi. It is a free advanced Bitcoin open-source training course aimed at senior developers in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Spain. B4OS offers training courses on Bitcoin fundamentals, Lightning Network development, and FOSS tools (such as Rust/Python). B4OS has a smaller funding scale, with funding for each developer ranging from $1,000 to $5,000.

2140

2140 was announced by two Bitcoin developers, Josie Baker and Ruben Somsen, at the Bitcoin Amsterdam Conference in 2024, with OKX as the main sponsor of the program. The name 2140 comes from the expected year when all Bitcoins will be mined, and the organization's purpose is to promote the development of related protocols to prepare Bitcoin for the situation of no block rewards before 2140.

2140 is currently the only organization of its kind registered in Europe, hiring full-time developers at its Amsterdam headquarters while also providing one-year funding for newcomers.

In addition to the organizations mentioned above, according to BitMEX research, institutions that have funded the development of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network over the nearly 17-year history since Bitcoin's inception include Bitmain, Bitfinex, and others. Trading platforms such as Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini have also provided grants to varying degrees, but most have not been continuous.

These sponsors have different funding methods; some publicly accept donations and then provide them to developers, while others use company profits to directly support them. Some organizations directly employ developers as full-time staff and provide job security, while others only offer grants, as shown in the image at the beginning of this section.

After interviews, the report's authors found that many developers, like everyone else, need to support their families, pay mortgages, and optimize their resumes, making them more willing to choose employment models. Some developers describe the grant model as "having to reapply for a job every year or two." The authors noted that although funding from grants has significantly increased in recent years, there is still a need for more employment-based funding methods to retain talent. They also stated that the current funding structure still needs to find a balance between non-profit organizations and companies to prevent the departure of unpaid donors and the risks posed by a sluggish market environment.

Between the lines, we can sense a delicate balance between the current developer ecosystem and the organizations initiating funding. Developers are not all "working for Bitcoin out of love," and the imbalance between employment and pure funding creates a sense of insecurity among developers, which we will see more evidence of in the subsequent introduction.

Regarding the amounts, the authors indicated that some figures are estimates based on public information and are not entirely accurate. The report states that the total expenditure of organizations that publicly accept donations (61.5%) is nearly double that of companies (38.5%), with funding (60.8%) exceeding salaries (39.2%). The difference mainly arises from the total funding amount of donation organizations (70%) being much higher than that of corporate entities (30%), while the total salary expenditures of both are similar.

The support from donors and the resource mismatch with some purpose-driven developers, coupled with insufficient support from profit-oriented companies, is an important issue reflected in the report. The talent exodus in Ethereum serves as a warning for Bitcoin; we still need more companies to step up and take responsibility for maintaining the value anchor of cryptocurrencies. I believe that high-profit companies in the industry, such as stablecoin issuers and trading platforms, should be required to provide long-term, employment-based support for Bitcoin developers and not "just reap the benefits without contributing."

Where Are the Funding Organizations?

Among the 13 organizations, 7 are located in North America, with 6 having their legal headquarters in the United States. Although Blockstream is registered in Canada, it also has an operational center in the US. It can be said that the US covers more than half of the funding organizations and is also home to the "oldest" 7.

Outside of North America, apart from 2140, which was established in Amsterdam, Netherlands last year, other organizations are registered in tax havens. The author listed the distribution of registration locations considering that differences in regulatory attitudes may affect the diversity of organizations, especially concerns about the US crackdown on the cryptocurrency industry. However, with Trump's election as the new US president, this issue has been resolved. Nevertheless, the author's concerns about the legal risks that funding privacy technology development may pose to donors and developers are indeed worth considering.

As for the coverage of the funding provided by these organizations, it has been mentioned to some extent in previous introductions. The funding from Brink, OpenSats, Maelstrom, Spiral, and OKX is not fixed to a specific region, while Blockstream, MIT DCI, and Chaincode primarily focus on the US and employ developers, while others mainly target Europe, Africa, and Latin America, with most adopting a funding model.

Where Are the Developers?

The report shows that as of 2024, among the 41 active core developers whose submissions have been merged into Bitcoin Core, 33 have publicly disclosed their locations.

The statistics show that there are 26 developers in the US and Europe, 3 in Latin America, located in Argentina, Brazil, and El Salvador. The remaining four are distributed across Africa, Asia (India), Australia, and Canada.

Developers from different regions also show significant differences in code contributions. In the year leading up to October 2024, among the 41 active core developers, the top 15 developers accounted for 71% of all contributions, the top 5 developers accounted for 41%, and the most active developer alone contributed 11%. Although the US has the most core developers, it ranks second in submission numbers (25%), lagging behind Europe (56%), with the UK alone accounting for 30% of the submission count. Additionally, the sole contributor from Sweden accounted for half of all contributions from US developers.

Regarding the distribution of funding organizations and developers, both the report's authors and Aaron Zhang raised a question: Asia, which has 78% of the world's population, has no core developers except for India. In response to this situation, the report's authors used the phrase "huge growth potential," while Aaron Zhang candidly stated that the contribution of Asian developers to Bitcoin Core is almost zero, "which means that a system serving global users has a core development circle that is almost isolated from Asia."

I believe this is largely due to cultural differences. The open-source culture that originated in Europe and the US is not widely accepted in Asia, and there seems to be no strong sense of "freedom" in the region. Although Asia does not lag behind Europe and the US in terms of talent strength and density, the cultural incompatibility makes it difficult to organize effectively in such a decentralized community. However, I also believe that once such organizations can develop, Asia will have a voice in the future development path of Bitcoin.

The Mysterious "Maintainers"

The report reveals the Bitcoin Core maintainers, of whom only 13 have existed over the past decade, who have the authority to merge code into Bitcoin Core.

Currently, there are 5 maintainers. At the time of writing the report, three were from Brink, while the other two came from Chaincode and Blockstream. Two years later, although the personnel have not changed, Ava Chow has moved from Blockstream to Localhost, and Gloria Zhao has transitioned from Brink to Chaincode.

Russ Yanofsky, funded by Chaincode, is currently one of the most active and respected long-term contributors, known for his extreme rigor, focus on code quality, and long-term maintainability. Russ Yanofsky's most notable contribution is assumeUTXO, which allows nodes to "assume" that the historical UTXO set provided by the official source is correct during synchronization, only needing to verify the most recent blocks, significantly shortening the initial synchronization time for new nodes (from several days to a few hours).

However, the idea was originally proposed by James O'Beirne, but Russ Yanofsky spent nearly 5 years refining it before it was finally merged into Bitcoin Core 27.0. Currently, Russ Yanofsky is leading the transition of Bitcoin Core from a single-process to a multi-process architecture (enable-multi-process), greatly enhancing future security and scalability. This is an extremely complex and controversial restructuring project that has been in progress for several years.

Ava Chow, who transitioned from Blockstream to Localhost, is a transgender female developer focusing on the practicality and security of the Bitcoin ecosystem, known for her contributions in wallet functionality and hardware integration. Ava Chow is the main developer of the Hardware Wallet Interface (HWI) open-source library, supporting the integration of hardware wallets like Ledger and Trezor with Bitcoin Core.

In 2024, amidst controversy, Ava closed Luke Dashjr's PR aimed at restricting Ordinals, citing "lack of consensus and creating noise." If you made money on ORDI, you might need to thank her.

As the only female maintainer among the five and the first physiologically female maintainer in Bitcoin's history, Gloria Zhao focuses on research in the areas of mempool, transaction relay, and consensus policy, regarded as a leading figure among the younger generation of Bitcoin developers (approximately 26 years old).

Gloria Zhao led the "Cluster Mempool" project (PR #30611, etc.), introducing the concept of transaction clusters and rewriting the mempool logic to improve the efficiency and fairness of RBF (Replace-By-Fee) and package relay. This feature has been partially activated in Bitcoin Core v28.0, significantly enhancing the network's resistance to pinning attacks.

Hennadii Stepanov is a Ukrainian developer who worked at a university before becoming a full-time Bitcoin developer. He resigned to "go all in on Bitcoin" after receiving funding from CardCoins and Payvant in 2020. Hennadii Stepanov focuses on GUI (Graphical User Interface) and is responsible for the Bitcoin Core GUI sub-library, fixing multiple GUI crashes and cross-platform compatibility issues.

According to the information I found, this individual seems to care a lot about "user experience" and is one of the important promoters of Bitcoin's mainstream adoption. His technical philosophy always starts from the perspective of "end users," and he even simulates some niche scenarios using old laptops during testing.

The last maintainer, who has been in office the longest (over 6 years), Michael Ford, began contributing code to Bitcoin in 2012 and was nominated as a maintainer at the CoreDev conference in 2019. Unlike the previous four, Michael Ford focuses on making "how to develop Bitcoin" easier, promoting the transition of Bitcoin from a resource-intensive model to a modern, modular open-source project.

Michael Ford led the migration from the old Autotools to modern CMake, improving cross-platform build efficiency (Windows, macOS, Linux) and reducing the number of dependency packages by 44%. Additionally, he has promoted the migration of security checks from old tools to LIEF (Library to Instrument Executable Formats) to prevent supply chain attacks. It can be said that Michael Ford is a "developer serving Bitcoin developers."

The "Dorsey Problem" in the Funding System

The report identifies two hidden dangers in the current funding system, one of which is the "Dorsey Problem."

Although the current funding organizations appear to have a low degree of centralization, in reality, 5 organizations' funding comes more or less from Jack Dorsey.

• 90.5% of OpenSats' donations come from Jack;
• 14.2% of Brink's donations come from Jack;
• Btrust's funding comes entirely from Jack and Jay-Z;
• Jack has also donated to MIT DCI's Bitcoin program, though the specific amount is undisclosed but estimated to be relatively small;
• Spiral is also a project under Block, where Jack serves as co-founder and CEO.

The author learned during interviews that Jack Dorsey generally does not interfere with the direction of donation funds, and some decisions are not particularly direct. However, this reliance on a "top donor" still raises concerns. The author expressed the same viewpoint as I do, that more "Jack-level" donors, especially private enterprises that have profited from Bitcoin, should take more responsibility in this regard. Fortunately, the newly established organizations are not related to Jack, and the two new organizations that the report's author learned about are also unrelated.

The second hidden danger lies in the sustainability of donation funds. Although most interviewees believe that the current funding available for sponsorship is abundant, whether this level of funding can be maintained is indeed questionable. During the bear market in 2022, the $8 million donation commitment received by MIT DCI in 2021 significantly shrank, and donations to Brink also decreased by 58% that year. Based on the cyclical nature of the cryptocurrency market, many organizations may choose to be cautious in funding during non-bear markets to prevent depletion of funds during bear markets.

Given that the current Web3 industry products and companies still lean towards trading, most companies' revenues will fluctuate with the price cycles of risk assets for a considerable time. The solution to this issue may require reiterating the need for companies with cross-cycle profitability (such as trading platforms) to take on the responsibility of ensuring that donation funds maintain a certain level.

Asia Needs to Step Up

In conclusion, the report summarizes several major issues in the Bitcoin developer ecosystem: a low number of active developers, insufficient funding amounts, concentration of funding organizations in specific jurisdictions, a lack of representation from Asia, high concentration of maintainers (with three maintainers belonging to the same company in 2024, though this issue has improved), scarcity of employment opportunities (with most funding still in the form of grants), concentration of funding sources, and fragile sustainability.

Regarding the gap in Bitcoin developers in the Chinese-speaking Web3 community, I have analyzed the reasons in the text. In fact, there are countless excellent developers in the country, but it is not enough to just shout slogans; individuals or organizations need to step up to take on this task to truly address the issue.

Many may worry about regulatory issues, especially with the recent release of several documents strengthening regulations, which has caused anxiety. However, I want to say that in the current complex international competition, especially in the context of great power rivalry, strengthening regulation of cryptocurrencies essentially initiates a classic "fool-proof mechanism," preventing a surge in fraud cases and capital outflows during periods of slower economic growth. However, this does not hinder grassroots organizations in the industry from striving for our voice in Bitcoin.

After reading the report from start to finish, it is reassuring that over the past decade, a large number of talented technicians have continuously contributed to the improvement and maintenance of Bitcoin, and there are bosses continuously supporting these developers with funding. This seemingly insufficient support has allowed Bitcoin to become a representative of new assets in less than 20 years, which can be called a "miracle."

What is concerning, however, is precisely that "this is a miracle."

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