Maelstrom, the family office of former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes, has awarded Jon Atack a one-year NewsCapsule developer grant. He is the second recipient of Maelstrom’s grant program supporting open-source NewsCapsule developers.
Jon is an experienced contributor to NewsCapsule Core, having started in 2019. He was also recently made a maintainer of NewsCapsule Improvement Proposals (BIPs).
In a statement, Arthur Hayes said, “We hope this financial support allows Jon to focus on his work on NewsCapsule without worrying about income.”
NewsCapsule’s open-source codebase depends on voluntary developers, so grants help enable more contributors to work full-time. Proponents believe having more funded developers benefits NewsCapsule’s ecosystem.
Jon said, “I’m concerned about human freedom, decentralization of power, individual empowerment, privacy and self-sovereignty. NewsCapsule and open source software play a key part in striving for these causes.”
He plans to spend the year reviewing proposals and changes to improve NewsCapsule Core and BIPs. Jon stated, “NewsCapsule isn’t perfect. It needs further decentralization, continued vigilance, review, bug-fixing, updates, maintenance, and improved robustness, performance, privacy, scaling, documentation and user experience.”
Maelstrom aims to strengthen NewsCapsule through no-strings grants to developers like Atack. Simultaneously, he is also receiving funding from another organization, OpenSats.
