Since its creation in August 2017, BTCPay Server has enjoyed a rapid growth (opens new window) of users and contributors.
Our mission was clear from the beginning: "Help businesses and individuals achieve self-sovereignty regardless of their political, geographic or financial barriers". The only way to truly achieve this goal is to make the software completely open and available for everyone. From day one, BTCPay has been free and open-source software, released under the MIT license. That means that anyone can use and modify BTCPay Server for their personal or commercial use. This also means that anyone can help us improve and grow.
What started (opens new window) as a one-man project 2 years ago, today is a versatile technology-stack built and maintained by passionate volunteers around the world, powering a growing number of businesses and individual projects. Countless hours from volunteers have went into the continuous development of the software to not only maintain and enhance the system but also keep its feature-set up to date with the fast-paced technology around bitcoin.
In a recent blog post (opens new window), we hinted that one of our goals is to solve the project's sustainability. We've reached a point where in order to grow further, we need a streamlined and stable structure for people who invest significant time contributing.
# BTCPay Server Foundation
We're excited to announce the BTCPay Server Foundation (opens new window). The Foundation is an entity independent of the BTCPay project. Its goal is to ensure continued financial support from corporate entities and allow heavily invested contributors to focus on the core mission. Donations to the foundation will be used only on endeavors which help to fulfill our core mission and only on work related to the BTCPay Server project.
Such endeavors include:
- Development of new BTCPay Server features
- Increase the reach of BTCPay Server (helping it to run in more diverse environments)
- Development and maintenance of e-commerce plugins
- Production of training/tutorial material (Video, documentation...)
- Promotion of BTCPay Server (events, hackathon, goodies)
Donations shall not be used for:
- Development of Altcoin related features (More altcoin support does not help to achieve self-sovereignty, Bitcoin is self-sufficient)
- Integration of third-party services to BTCPay. (Introducing third party dependency goes against the self-sovereignty principle)
It's important to remind everyone: "BTCPay Server Foundation" is NOT meant to be an entity which controls the development, monetizes, claims ownership, or assumes the ownership of BTCPay Server. The structure is only meant to provide an easy way for companies which want to help BTCPay Server's sustainability.
# Square Crypto Grant
We were feeling the joy, shared with the rest of Bitcoin community when Jack Dorsey announced Square Crypto (opens new window) initiative. Bitcoin for everyone will not happen without wider support, and it was a pleasure to see established company like Square committing to funding several open source contributors, both designers and developers.
Today, we are proud to announce that we will be one of those open source contributors funded by Square Crypto. We are not an individual, but a distributed team, so the grant from Square Crypto will be supporting more than one person. In the end BTCPayServer is not just Nicolas Dorier... or r0ckstardev, pavlenex and Kukks. It is a community that includes dozens of translators, testers, merchants, third-party hosts, designers, educators and everyone else who set aside even a moment of their time to contribute to the effort.
Beyond accelerating development of BTCPay Server, we also look forward to the grant as a way to solidify our focus. We don't only believe in "Bitcoin for everyone", we live it. And it will be true pleasure to live that mission together with equally committed partner such as Square Crypto.
# Supporting the foundation
We're off to a good start, but we still need help from more corporate entities. Besides the core team that is still not fully funded, our community has a growing number of active contributors that also deserve compensation for their time and effort. The team has been incredibly productive over the past 2 years, shipping over 420 releases (opens new window) with amazing features. Imagine the impact we can have by allowing dedicated and passionate contributors to focus their efforts without worrying about the finances.
We hope that other entities will follow Square Crypto's lead and help us fully fund our community of active contributors. The team has been incredibly productive over the past 2 years, shipping over 420 releases with amazing features.
More information about our long-term vision for the BTCPay Server Foundation will be provided in Nicolas' Dorier presentation on 16.09.2019 during BTCPay Day Riga (opens new window) event.
If you're a business and would like to become a supporter of BTCPay Server Foundation and help us create an open-financial future for everyone, please get in touch via a contact form on the foundation's website (opens new window).