Ben Allen received Grant, vortex Bitcoin developer, to advance Payjoin Tech
Arthur Hayes’s family office announced in a recent press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine that Ben Allen was named the third winner of the vortex Bitcoin developer Maelstrom Bitcoin Developer Grant. Next year, Allen will focus on enhancing the Payjoin Dev Kit project, a privacy-centric Bitcoin trading tool designed to improve user anonymity and network scalability.
Payjoin was first introduced in BIP 78 by Nicolas Dorier, allowing senders and receivers to provide input to a single Bitcoin transaction. This undermines the common assumption used by financial surveillance firms that multiple transaction investments must come from one entity. By breaking this assumption, even the adoption of limited PayJoin can enhance privacy on the Bitcoin network.
“Maelstrom wants to congratulate Ben Allen on this grant,” said Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer at Maelstrom. “The great thing about Payjoin is that if only a small amount of adoption is achieved, it breaks the key assumptions used by financial surveillance companies. Their assumption is that if Bitcoin transactions have multiple inputs and all inputs must all belong to the same entity, then the paid tool can be paid, and even if they have to pay for it, we will pay for anyone excited about adoption.”
Allen, who will work with Dan Gould, aims to expand the implementation of Payjoin to integrate it into more Bitcoin wallets. He acknowledged the technical complexity of the project (including requirements for recipients online), but expressed optimism about overcoming these challenges.
“I am so grateful to Arthur Hayes and Maelstrom for their generous gift to support my work on the Payjoin Dev Kit project,” Allen said. “With this funding, I can devote myself full-time to enhancing the implementation of payroll companies, improving testing, and ensuring that the development kit remains strong, well documented, and maintained in the future.”
Allen also highlights the broader mission of his work: “Improving Bitcoin’s privacy is an area of continuous improvement that can be done by giving users control over their financial data and promoting Bitcoin’s daily use of Bitcoin. It is an exciting opportunity. It is an exciting opportunity to contribute to the privacy and scalability of Bitcoin and I look forward to working with the community to make it more collaborative to make it more collaborative.’’
Maelstrom focuses on supporting digital asset infrastructure, led by Arthur Hayes, co-founder of Bitmex. With such grants, the company is investing in underlying tools that can promote a more private, scalable and decentralized Bitcoin ecosystem.
