Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Square, Seek Developers for Open Source Crypto Projects

The incentive goes beyond the business goals of Square, and was described as an act of giving back to the community.

In what was seen as a bullish view of the digital asset sector, Twitter’s CEOJack Dorsey, @jack, announced a special program to hire developers and a designer, to work on open source cryptocurrency projects.

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1108487911802966017

Cryptocurrency projects are usually supported by voluntary efforts, and some are open source, although there are restrictions to code additions. However, the offer means that a small but dedicated team will be available to work on either Bitcoin (BTC), or other digital assets.

Dorsey believes the designer will add to the team, as appealing designs may drive adoption further. In the past, Dorsey has also added to the acceptance of digital assets, by putting up aTippinbutton, allowing micro-tipping through the Lightning Network. For now, the usage is limited as users have to verify their identity and use the LN-powered service.

Using open source and voluntary contributions has not always been smooth. In the early days of the Bitcoin Gold (BTG) project, a voluntary developer proposed a wallet that later turned out to be compromised, ending up in a loss of funds. Other open source projects depend on a dedicated, verified team, and in the case of Bitcoin, the Bitcoin Core team is making the chief contributions.

The announcement arrives at a time when the bear market has hurt prices, but projects are still showing the enthusiasm to build their products and find use cases for blockchains. Despite the lowered prices, some projects manage to find users, especially by offering fast-running distributed apps, as in the case of EOS and TRON.

Twitter mentions are also lifting up the fortunes of a handful of coins, and projects like TRON are highly active on social media.