256 Foundation Wins $100,000 from the MARA Foundation
By 256 Foundation
At 3:00 PM PST on April 29, 2026 — in the closing hours of the Bitcoin 2026 Conference in Las Vegas — the MARA Foundation announced the winner of its inaugural $100,000 community contribution.
The 256 Foundation won.
With 1,947 votes and 39% of the total — out of 4,971 votes cast across three candidates — our community chose open-source Bitcoin mining infrastructure as the most important place to put $100,000 right now.
We're grateful. And we're putting it straight to work.
About the MARA Foundation Election
The MARA Foundation launched at Bitcoin 2026 with a first act: a public election to award $100,000 to one of three mission-aligned organizations. The three candidates were:
- 256 Foundation — funding open-source Bitcoin mining hardware and software
- Libreria de Satoshi — multilingual Bitcoin technical education (2nd, 34%, 1,667 votes)
- SateNet — community-run wireless internet powered by Bitcoin (3rd, 27%, 1,357 votes)
Voting was open to anyone — online and in-person at the MARA booth on the conference floor. The result was announced live as the conference wound down.
We want to be clear: all three of these organizations are doing genuinely important work. We're honored to have been chosen alongside them.
DOOMAXE: The Machine That Made the Case
The best argument for why open-source mining infrastructure matters isn't a slide deck. It's a machine.
At Bitcoin 2026, Schnitzel — one of 256 Foundation's lead engineers — built and brought DOOMAXE: a fully open-source reference miner, assembled specifically for this conference to show what the open stack can already do.
Here's what's running inside it:
- Libre Board — our open-source ASIC control board, handling everything
- Mujina — our open-source mining firmware, running on the control board
- Bitaxe — as the hashboard (Schnitzel didn't have an Ember One on hand)
- Hydrapool — our open-source mining pool software, running on a Raspberry Pi compute module hat mounted directly on top of the Libre Board — along with its own Bitcoin node. The node and the pool are running on the miner itself.
- Proto Fleet — a free and open-source miner management system from our Tier 1 supporter Proto, also running on the control board
Every layer of the Bitcoin mining stack — firmware, control board, pool software, node, fleet management — open source. One machine. Built in a few days before the conference.
And the screen on the front plays Doom.
That's the point. Open-source software is composable. When the pieces are free and auditable, anyone can build something like this. DOOMAXE is a demonstration of what the 256 Foundation is funding — not in theory, but in hardware, running live at the world's largest Bitcoin conference.
What the $100,000 Means
The 256 Foundation is a 100% passthrough organization. Every dollar we raise goes directly to the developers building the open-source Bitcoin mining stack.
The $100,000 from the MARA Foundation will fund continued progress on all four of our core pillar projects:
- Ember One — open-source Bitcoin mining hashboard reference design
- Mujina — open-source Linux-based Bitcoin mining firmware
- Libre Board — open-source ASIC control board
- Hydrapool — one-click deployable open-source Bitcoin mining pool
These projects are already active. Engineers are already building. This funding keeps them building.
Our Community Won This
We did not win this alone.
Our supporters, miners, builders, and followers showed up — online and on the conference floor. They voted. They spread the word. They made the case.
Thank you.
What's Next
The projects are in progress. The money is already heading where it needs to go. Now we need something harder to buy: your attention, your feedback, and your involvement.
Explore and contribute on the forum → forum.256foundation.org
Developers — review the code and propose changes → github.com/256foundation
Come to Telehash #4 on May 19th → View the event
The open-source mining stack is being built in public, for everyone. The best way to support it is to show up and participate.
The 256 Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. 100% of contributions go directly to open-source mining developers. Become a supporter →