Square is stepping up again for Bitcoin
Here's a grant I like to see from Square Crypto; funding Riccardo Casatta to help build out the Bitcoin Development Kit. For those of you freaks who are unfamiliar with the Bitcoin Development Kit it is a project that aims to build tools and development libraries to make it so different wallets are compatible with each other. Up to this point in Bitcoin's existence wallet builders have built their products in unique ways, which is cool, but it has made it so many wallets aren't compatible with each other. If the open source developers working on BDK are successful, there will be an open source standard of descriptor based bitcoin wallets that are compatible with each other. This would be a massive boon to ease of use for your every day user and individuals working on wallet software. Shoutout to Square Crypto for continuing to contribute to these efforts.
Currently on sabbatical from Blockstream, Riccardo will be helping Alekos Filini and Steve Myers build the Bitcoin Development Kit. He’s also working on Firma, a FOSS project of his own that turns old phones and computers into air-gapped bitcoin wallet signers.
— Square Crypto (@sqcrypto) October 23, 2020
🌀
Riccardo's grant is doubly interesting because of the Firma project he is also working on. Today is the first I've heard of Firma, but off the bat it seems like an incredible initiative. Being able to repurpose old hardware that isn't specific to bitcoin into a bitcoin transaction signing device is something that is very intriguing to me. It would add a layer of disguise to bitcoin tools. Increasing user privacy. I am all for these types of developments.
Slowly but surely, the software and hardware infrastructure that will be necessary to bring bitcoin to the masses is being built out. The way the open source community is going about this build out seems to be very methodical and aligns with my belief that there is an order of operations to building out the network so that it has the highest chances of achieving its goals of providing the world with a distributed peer-to-peer cash system that is extremely hard to censor and cannot be controlled by any central authority.
Onward!
Final thought...
Back is sore from paddling. This is the best kind of sore. Got crushed on the inside this morning when I first paddled out, but it was worth it.
Enjoy your weekend, freaks.
