Well-known crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX has reportedly disclosed details regarding its $150,000 grant dedicated to Calvin Kim – a Bitcoin scaling expert from Korea. 

Specifically, the grant is reportedly the next display of support from BitMEX for Kim, with the first donation to the researcher’s work – up to $30,000 – was made in August last year. 

For the research he is working on at the moment, Kim reportedly looks to finalize the implementation of Utreexo into Bitcoin deployments, utilizing the Go and Rust programming languages respectively, while also spending his efforts to enhance “the initial block download time in Bitcoin.”

Utreexo reportedly functions as a Bitcoin scaling tool and hash accumulator, which Kim has been developing since mid-2019, where Digital Currency Initiative researcher Thaddeus Dryja from MIT initially put up the proposal for the protocol’s blueprint. 

BitMEX is reportedly in charge of the issuance of the new grant, via a partnership with the non-profit Human Rights Foundation (HRF) – an organization supporting human rights activism throughout the world – with the HRF making a $50,000 contribution, apart from the BitMEX’s $100,000 one-year grant for Kim.

“This year, with the financial support of BitMEX and the Human Rights Foundation, I intend to continue what I was doing last year and continue moving the Utreexo project to something a user can download and use.” Kim reportedly remarked. 

HRF additionally stated that it has been putting its resources towards promoting human rights on the Korean peninsula through technology” for a while, and that it aims to become an inspiration for individuals in the area, to get themselves increasingly associated with Bitcoin. 

Bitcoin was reportedly selected by the HRF to focus on due to its potential to be “a tool of freedom for human rights defenders facing hyperinflation or financial surveillance.”