HUMAN RIGHTS FOUNDATION AWARDS 16 PROJECTS 60 MILLION SATS BITCOIN GRANT

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) announced a new round of grants totaling over 60 million sats (approximately $472,800) through its Bitcoin Development Fund to 16 projects worldwide, spanning Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The grants aim to strengthen the Bitcoin protocol, expand Bitcoin's real-world usage, and provide secure communication tools for dissidents.

This marks HRF's second round of funding in 2026, following its earlier support for 26 projects in April. The funded initiatives cover multiple areas:

In Bitcoin payments, BitSpenda plans to expand its mobile-money-to-Bitcoin bridge tool to reduce cross-border transfer costs in Africa; Project Island Resilience, based on Jamaican developer Flash's wallet, will add offline payment features via Bluetooth, NFC, and ecash; Bitzed helps Zambian users buy Bitcoin directly with mobile money.

In Bitcoin development, Libbitcoinkernel, Floresta, BDK-Dart, and WalletScrutiny focus respectively on reusing core code, lightweight nodes, cross-platform wallet tools, and wallet auditing.

In the Nostr ecosystem, Vector, Flotilla Chat, OpenAlert, and 0xchat receive support to provide censorship-resistant communication tools.