This is content from my response to Adam Back on twitter, reformatted for Stacker News
Happy to answer any questions
Id estimate Bitcoin Core developer funding is similar to what 1A1z outlined in last years report (https://s3.amazonaws.com/1a1z.com/files/1A1z%20-%20Funding%20Bitcoin%20-%20Part%201.pdf)
Since then, 2140 and localhost research have come online which is good for decentralization.
There are good new Bitcoin Core developer candidates coming out of Chaincode's BOSS program who I think are worthy of funding.
At Brink we just had Marco finish his year long fuzz testing fellowship in London and he has moved to full time (https://brink.dev/blog/2025/07/31/marco-fuzzing-fellowship/) and will be announcing 2 fuzz testing interns shortly.
i'd suspect there are too many contributors
I don't think the situation is dire by any means, but 30-40 full time engineers focusing on maintaining and hardening mission critical software for a $2.5T network doesnt feel like too many to me.
funding has overshot
See above. But also, grants/salaries are still quite below industry salaries, although better than years past. Additional monies can provide funding organizations runway which helps attract new engineers. New orgs are good for decentralization and also need funding. We also want to make sure new contributors get involved (think: bus factor, turnover, etc). There are initiatives that dont involve engineer salaries as well (compute power, software/services, etc)
If anything the room for improvement is more diverse funding sources (good for decentralization and perception of "influence" issues) and donations/pledges that are longer term (low time preference).
funding for a purpose
Funding for specific deliverables is hard in open source and probably harder in Bitcoin and even harder in Bitcoin Core. That said, I do think many funding orgs do have focus areas. Brink for example is security, testing, review, and maintenance work. Others have focus areas as well. Donors can choose what kinds of initiatives/purposes they want to support.