Human Rights Foundation awards $396,854 in bitcoin grants to 16 projects in Africa

The Human Rights Foundation has announced $396,854 in bitcoin grants from its Bitcoin Development Fund to support 16 global projects. This second funding round of 2026 targets initiatives in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that strengthen the Bitcoin protocol, expand financial access, and build decentralized, Nostr-based communication tools. Key recipients include BitSpenda, Bitzed, and Agora, which provide critical financial and communication infrastructure for activists and dissidents operating under authoritarian regimes.

HRF Bitcoin Development Fund grants

• ▪The Human Rights Foundation announced a grant round of over 500 million satoshis, worth $396,854, to support 16 projects across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
• ▪The August 2026 grants represent the Human Rights Foundation's second funding round of the year, following a previous round in April 2026 that supported 26 projects.
• ▪The Human Rights Foundation's Bitcoin Development Fund grants aim to strengthen the Bitcoin protocol, expand practical access, and facilitate secure messaging and community infrastructure for dissidents.

Bitcoin payment infrastructure in Africa

• ▪Project Island Resilience received funding to add offline payments using Bluetooth, near-field communication, and ecash to Flash, a Bitcoin and Lightning wallet created by Jamaican developer Dread.
• ▪BitSpenda, a mobile money-to-bitcoin bridge operating in Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda, and Ghana, received funding to expand its non-custodial, account-free cross-border payment tools.
• ▪Bitzed, an account-free platform created by educator Humphrey in Zambia, received funding to expand its self-custodial path connecting mobile money networks directly to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin protocol development projects

• ▪Libbitcoinkernel, a software project by developer yuvicc that extracts core security and transaction rules from Bitcoin's original code into reusable modules, received funding to help developers build secure wallets.
• ▪BDK-Dart, a toolkit developed by John Osezele that provides pre-built Bitcoin wallet-building blocks for the Flutter framework, received funding to support a major software release and reference wallet.
• ▪Floresta, a lightweight Bitcoin node implementation developed by Luis Schwab that embeds directly into wallet apps to enable local and private transaction verification, received funding for Utreexo wallet integrations.
• ▪WalletScrutiny, a project that audits Bitcoin wallets to verify that distributed software matches its open-source code, received funding to expand its review of wallet dependencies and third-party frameworks.

Nostr-based communication tools

• ▪OpenAlert, a decentralized notification platform created by Fernando Diego Pergolini and Jorge Carlos Franco, received funding to cover hardware and personnel costs for delivering urgent alerts via Nostr.
• ▪0xchat, an encrypted messaging app built on Nostr by developer water783, received funding to advance its communication tool, which integrates Tor and a built-in Cashu wallet for private payments.
• ▪Flotilla Chat, a Discord-style platform built on Nostr by the Coracle client team, received funding to develop role-based access control, voice chat, and Bitcoin-native funding tools.
• ▪Vector, an open-source, permissionless messenger built on the Nostr protocol, received funding to launch on iOS and desktop and to release encrypted voice and video calls.

Bitcoin mining decentralization

• ▪The 256 Foundation, a nonprofit working to open-source all components of a Bitcoin miner from hardware to software, received funding to reduce reliance on centralized manufacturers.
• ▪The 256 Foundation received backing to strengthen network decentralization and support private methods of acquiring bitcoin under dictatorial regimes.

Bitcoin education initiatives

• ▪Agora, a decentralized activist platform built on Nostr and Bitcoin, received funding to support a 9-month pilot deployment in Venezuela for censorship-resistant communication and peer-to-peer fundraising.
• ▪Hack4Freedom, a developer education program created by Brianna Honkawa d'Estries, received a grant to cover event and travel costs for training women in Africa and Brazil to build on freedom tech.
• ▪HODL: Hands On Design Lab received funding to support personnel and run three cohorts over 12 months for early-career UI and UX designers in India to improve Bitcoin tool usability.
• ▪My First Bitcoin received funding to double the number of educators trained through its Educator Training Program from approximately 60 to 120, focusing on communities under authoritarian rule.