Okcoin Awards Latest Developer Grant To Marco Falke

The cryptocurrency exchange has extended Bitcoin Core maintainer Marco Falke’s no strings attached grant for another year.

• Bitcoin Core’s most prolific developer Marco Falke has received Okcoin’s latest Open Source Developer Grant.
• This marks the second year he has been awarded a grant from Okcoin, allowing him to work on Bitcoin Core remotely full time.
• Falke will focus on testing, modularization, and outreach.

Cryptocurrency exchange Okcoin announced today the latest recipient of its Open Source Developer Grant, Bitcoin Core developer Marco Falke.

“Falke is Bitcoin Core’s most prolific developer, and this is the 2nd year he has been awarded a grant from Okcoin,” the company said in an announcement shared with Bitcoin Magazine. “The grant is awarded with no strings attached, allowing him to focus solely on open source development.”

In September, Falke became Bitcoin Core’s most active contributor after logging his 1,752nd commit to the project’s GitHub repository, surpassing W. J. van der Laan.

“When it comes to my contributions, I think the majority are smaller improvements, which are each exciting for their own reasons,” Falke told Bitcoin Magazine in September. “I’ve mostly continued to improve testing and spend time on quality assurance and review.”

Thanks to Okcoin’s grants, Falke has been able to work remotely from an undisclosed location in improving the Bitcoin Core codebase full time. The developer received his first yearly grant from the cryptocurrency exchange last year, allowing him to move from New York City to his new secret location. With the new funding, Falke told Okcoin he would focus on testing, modularization, and outreach.

Falke hunts for vulnerabilities in Bitcoin Core’s code through a fuzz testing technique, in which a program sends large amounts of data to Bitcoin Core and analyzes its reaction. If the project behaves differently than expected, the fuzzer program flags what caused the anomaly.

The developer also works in modularizing the codebase, structuring it into separate modules. This practice makes it easier for developers to work on patching and improving code and makes running Bitcoin Core possible with lower computational costs.

Finally, Falke said he would also train new developers to work in Bitcoin Core and increase the project’s robustness and resiliency.

Okcoin shared with Bitcoin Magazine that the firm has now invested more than $1,000,000 in Bitcoin open source development through its grant program.