HRF Grants 500M+ Satoshis to 16 Freedom Tech Projects Worldwide

NEW YORK (August 25, 2026) — The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is pleased to announce grants totaling more than 500 million satoshis from its Bitcoin Development Fund (BDF). This round supports 16 projects advancing open-source Bitcoin and Nostr development, self-custody and wallet security, censorship-resistant communications, merchant and mobile money payment integrations, and research and education for people living under authoritarian regimes. Grantee projects will strengthen the Bitcoin protocol, expand practical Bitcoin access across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, facilitate secure messaging and community infrastructure for dissidents, and grow grassroots education and design capacity worldwide. Together, these efforts help human rights defenders, journalists, nonprofits, and everyday people communicate, organize, save, and transact more freely under repression.

HRF’s grantees for Round II of 2026 include:

BITCOIN PAYMENTS

BitSpenda

Across Africa, cross-border money transfers are often slow, costly, and rely on intermediaries. BitSpenda, a mobile money-to-bitcoin bridge, offers a non-custodial, account-free tool that lets people in Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda, and Ghana send bitcoin from a Lightning wallet directly to a mobile money account, where it is received in local currency. With HRF’s support, BitSpenda plans to expand its payment tools to make cross-border payments faster, cheaper, and more accessible in the region.

Project Island Resilience

In parts of the Caribbean, power outages and authoritarian repression can cut people off from both communication and access to money. Project Island Resilience builds on Flash, a Bitcoin and Lightning wallet created by Jamaican developer Dread. After Hurricane Melissa devastated Jamaica in late 2025, the app raised and distributed more than $10,000 in bitcoin within 72 hours. Now, the project plans to add offline payments to Flash using Bluetooth, near-field communication (NFC), and ecash, creating a model for how Bitcoin can continue working in adversarial conditions. HRF’s grant will support this next phase, helping build practical Bitcoin infrastructure that can be used during protests and internet shutdowns.

Bitzed

In Zambia, mobile money is commonly used, but buying bitcoin still usually requires banks or centralized exchanges that maintain identity records and control individuals’ assets. Bitzed, created by Bitcoin educator Humphrey, is an account-free platform that connects mobile money networks directly to Bitcoin in Zambia. Users can buy bitcoin using existing mobile money accounts and receive it straight to their own Lightning wallet. HRF’s funding will help expand this self-custodial path into Bitcoin for Zambians excluded from traditional banking and subject to financial repression.

BITCOIN DEVELOPMENT

Libbitcoinkernel

Many Bitcoin applications have to rebuild the protocol’s most complex security rules from scratch, which increases the risk of catastrophic errors. Libbitcoinkernel is a software project pulling the core security and transaction rules directly from Bitcoin’s original code and turning them into reusable software modules. This will allow freedom tech developers to build more secure and independent wallets, services, and infrastructure without having to duplicate Bitcoin’s critical code. Support from HRF will help developer yuvicc continue this foundational work, strengthening the foundations of Bitcoin tools on which people under financial repression rely.

A Node in Every Wallet: Utreexo Wallet Integrations

Most Bitcoin wallets still rely on centralized servers to access balance and transaction history, compromising user privacy. Floresta is a lightweight version of a Bitcoin node that embeds directly into wallet apps, reducing the storage needed to verify Bitcoin transactions, so wallets can then check data locally and privately. This grant will support developer Luis Schwab in ensuring that wallets cut out the middlemen and interface directly with the Bitcoin network.

BDK-Dart

In many authoritarian countries, mobile wallets are the most practical way to access Bitcoin. But building apps that give users full control of their funds without relying on a central authority remains a challenge. BDK-Dart is a toolkit that gives developers pre-built Bitcoin wallet-building blocks for Flutter, a popular framework to build apps for any device. The toolkit allows developers to more easily build secure, custodial Bitcoin wallets using a single, shared codebase across platforms. Supported by HRF, software developer John Osezele will make a major release of this software and a reference wallet, lowering barriers for developers to build self-custodial Bitcoin apps worldwide.

WalletScrutiny

Most Bitcoin users have no way to check whether a wallet app actually matches the open-source code it claims to run. WalletScrutiny is a project that audits Bitcoin wallets for transparency and verifies that the distributed software matches its source code. Funding will support expanded review of wallet dependencies and third-party frameworks, helping activists, journalists, and changemakers choose trustworthy Bitcoin applications in authoritarian contexts. HRF has supported WalletScrutiny before, and this grant continues that work as the recent Coldcard hack underscores the importance that the software running on a Bitcoin wallet is actually the software users expect.

NOSTR

Vector Privacy: Privacy by Principle

In high-risk environments, private messaging requires more than just encryption; it also means avoiding account creation, metadata trails, and censorship. Vector is an open-source messenger built on Nostr (a decentralized communications protocol) that is permissionless and uses end-to-end encryption. HRF’s grant will help Vector launch on iOS and desktop, release encrypted voice and video calls, and provide journalists, activists, and whistleblowers with a stable, censorship-resistant tool to communicate and coordinate without fear of being tracked or silenced by dictators.

Flotilla Chat

Civil society groups and communities often rely on centralized communications platforms that can delete forums, remove users, or shut down networks with little warning. Flotilla Chat, built by the Nostr client Coracle, is a Discord-style platform built on Nostr that separates a user’s identity from the hosting provider. On Flotilla, organizers control their own infrastructure. Meanwhile, members keep portable identities across the network, reducing censorship risks. HRF’s funding will help develop features such as role-based access control, voice chat, and Bitcoin-native funding tools to make online assembly more resilient under autocratic regimes.

OpenAlert: Decentralized Critical Alerts for Nostr

Critical emergency alerts often depend on centralized push notification services — such as those run by Apple or Google — which can be easily blocked, monitored, or fail during a crisis. OpenAlert, created by software developers Fernando Diego Pergolini and Jorge Carlos Franco, is an alternative notification platform to deliver urgent alerts. Its main layer uses the decentralized Nostr network to issue alerts via anonymous text and audio messages, with end-to-end encryption and programmed self-destruction, protecting user identity from censorship and repression. HRF’s support will cover hardware and personnel costs to develop a tool that helps human rights defenders receive urgent alerts about what is going on around them.

0xchat

Activists and journalists need private, reliable communication tools, but many existing apps still expose users to surveillance and censorship. 0xchat, created by software developer water783, is a messaging app built on Nostr that offers fully encrypted chat, file transfer, voice, and video calls. It features an integration with Tor, a technology that masks internet traffic to protect a user’s physical location and identity. 0xchat also includes a built-in Cashu wallet for private Bitcoin payments. HRF’s support will help advance this communication tool so people can coordinate more safely without relying on platforms vulnerable to authoritarian intervention.

BITCOIN MINING

256 Foundation

Bitcoin mining hardware is still dominated by a few manufacturers using proprietary technology, which can limit participation and the way the network is secured. The 256 Foundation is a nonprofit working to break this oligopoly by open-sourcing every part of a Bitcoin miner: from the hardware to the software that runs them. Making mining tools more accessible and transparent reduces the network’s reliance on centralized manufacturers. Backing from HRF will strengthen network decentralization while also supporting one of the most private ways to acquire bitcoin under a dictatorship.

BITCOIN EDUCATION

My First Bitcoin

Financial education is often shaped by state institutions, leaving little room to question how monetary systems work, let alone to explore alternatives. My First Bitcoin is an educational initiative providing free, open-source educational resources through a global education node network: a group of independent educators active in more than 40 countries, including India, Uganda, and Indonesia. HRF’s support will help grow the educators trained through their Educator Training Program, from roughly 60 to 120, with a focus on communities living under authoritarian rule achieving financial freedom.

Agora: Bitcoin Lightning Activation & Civic Infrastructure Pilot

In Venezuela, activists, independent journalists, and civic organizers face blocked platforms, surveillance, and difficulty receiving international support. Agora is a decentralized activist platform built on Nostr and Bitcoin that supports coordination, censorship-resistant communication, and peer-to-peer financial support for communities under authoritarianism. Agora includes a non-custodial Bitcoin fundraising component that enables people anywhere in the world to support individuals and causes directly, with contributions sent directly to recipients’ wallets. Developed in part through an HRF-supported hackathon, this grant will support Agora’s 9-month pilot deployment in Venezuela, demonstrating how Freedom Tech functions as practical civic infrastructure in an authoritarian environment.

HODL: Hands On Design Lab

Many Bitcoin tools remain hard to use because their interfaces do not clearly guide users through the critical steps of self-custody, privacy, and security. HODL: Hands On Design Lab is an education initiative that runs structured cohorts for early-career designers in India. HODL prepares them to contribute to apps, projects, and tools across the Bitcoin ecosystem. This will help close a usability gap in Bitcoin by training UI and UX designers to directly improve how people interact with it in practice. Funding will support personnel and three cohorts over 12 months to help make Bitcoin easier for everyone to use.

Hack4Freedom

Women in Africa and Latin America often face exclusion from the education and technical training needed to contribute to freedom tech. Hack4Freedom, created by Evento founder Brianna Honkawa d’Estries, is a two-week developer education program that trains women in Africa and Brazil to build on Bitcoin and other open-source freedom tech projects. With cohorts in cities such as Lagos, Nairobi, and São Paulo, HRF’s grant will cover event and travel costs, creating new opportunities for women to participate in developing tools for financial and digital freedom.

ABOUT BDF

BDF supports individuals and projects that make Bitcoin and related freedom technologies more powerful tools for human rights defenders operating in authoritarian regimes. Since launching in 2020, BDF has granted $12.2 million in BTC to 383 projects across 70 countries worldwide.

Learn more about BDF on our website.