Mozilla started accepting cryptocurrency donations back in 2014

Mike Melanson's This Week in Programming column focuses on what happened after Mozilla founder Jamie "jwz" Zawinski slammed the organization for accepting cryptocurrency donations.

It is reported that Zawinski said it was working with "Ponzi scammers who burned the earth."

Mozilla started accepting cryptocurrency donations back in 2014

Peter Linss, one of the creators of the Gecko browser engine on which Mozilla Firefox is based, also came out in support of Zawinski. Linss says it supports Zawinski 100 percent.

When Mozilla first announced in 2014 that it would accept bitcoin donations, it cited Khan Academy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), United Way, Greenpeace and the Wikimedia Foundation as its sources of accepting the cryptocurrency. Ethics and integrity of fellow citizens. Of this list, only Greenpeace has since stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations, and told the Financial Times earlier this year that “as the amount of energy required to run Bitcoin becomes clearer, this policy (Accepting cryptocurrency donations) is no longer viable.”

On Thursday, the Mozilla Foundation announced a moratorium on cryptocurrency donations to review whether the idea aligns with their climate goals.

Mike Shaver, another founder of the Mozilla project, also tweeted his support, writing: "It's great to see this reflection happening."

Mozilla started accepting cryptocurrency donations back in 2014

In a follow-up blog post on the incident, Zawinski doubled down on Mozilla's acceptance of cryptocurrencies. "Cryptocurrency is not only an apocalyptic ecological catastrophe, but an even dumber pyramid scheme, and incredibly poisonous to another ideal Mozilla once championed - the open web," he wrote.

Mozilla started accepting cryptocurrency donations back in 2014

Meanwhile, the donation page still lists BitPay as one of its payment methods, despite Mozilla saying it suspended the ability to donate cryptocurrency during the review.