A senior Linux developer tasked with overseeing Bitcoin’s main random number generator, linux-rng, has been awarded one of the most distinguished grants available to developers. OpenSats, a non-profit public charity established in early 2021 that has bestowed over $10 million, has granted Jason Donenfeld ongoing funding.
Unlike its project-specific or short-term grants, OpenSats provides financing on a long-term basis to some of Bitcoin’s most engaged developers. In May, Jack Dorsey infused the charity with an additional $21 million, effectively more than doubling OpenSats’ available resources for grants.
Donenfeld joins a select group of distinguished Bitcoin developers as an OpenSats Long-Term Support Grantee, alongside Marco Falke, René Pickhardt, and Sjors Provoost. Most long-term grantees at OpenSats play a role in the code review and maintenance of Bitcoin’s repository and its related technologies.
Donenfeld is also the founder of WireGuard, a VPN technology. He serves as the main author and maintainer of linux-rng, a library integrated within Bitcoin’s code for generating cryptographically secure random numbers.
Specifically, linux-rng gathers entropy from various computer components, hashes these diverse sources of entropy, and employs those hashes to seed and re-seed random number generators utilized in kernel processes. This cryptographic function is vital to Bitcoin’s security, particularly during the creation of public/private key pairs.
Protos tried to contact Donenfeld for comments but did not receive an immediate response before publication.
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