Block CEO Jack Dorsey Donates IDR 74.5 Billion To Support Bitcoin Developers Through Brink

JAKARTA - Brink, a nonprofit that aims to support Bitcoin developers, has announced a $5 million donation from Block CEO Jack Dorsey and his Start Small funding group.

In a tweet on June 14, Brink said that Dorsey and Start Small pledged to donate $1 million (IDR 14.8 billion) annually over the next five years as part of a "development developer funding". Before resigning from his post as CEO of Twitter, Dorsey launched the fund in April 2020 in an attempt to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the Twitter CEO said he had donated $1 billion (IDR 14.8 trillion) to establish the agency.

According to the Start Small website, the funds have more than US$1.4 billion (Rp20.8 trillion) in funding at the time of publication, with more than US$500 million (Rp7.4 trillion) distributed to various projects, including the Tor nonprofit' Project behind the anonymous Tor Browser Signal Technology Foundation that supports Signal messaging applications, and the Calyx Institute, a digital privacy education platform.

Reporting from the tweet, Brink announced that they received a donation of USD 5 million from Jack Dorsey and Start Small for developer funding efforts. Brink will receive USD 1 million annually over the next five years.

Established in 2020, Brink offered a wingship and grant program to support open-source Bitcoin developers and engineers. In addition to support from crypto advocates like Dorsey, digital asset companies like Nexo have previously donated funds to the group as part of an effort to support Bitcoin developers.

Companies engaged in crypto and blockchain have made similar efforts to set up funds that encourage developers to contribute. In December 2022, Dogecoin started a fund for core developers in the amount of US$360,000 (Rp5.3 billion), and it was reported that metaverse developer Animoca Brands plans to set up billions of dollars worth of funds for startups.