Mozilla Foundation Backtracks on Crypto Following Backlash

Jamie Zawinski, who also co-founded Netscape, unleashed his fury in a vitriol-laden tweet on Jan. 3 resulting in the Foundation backtracking on its decision to accept cryptocurrencies.

The San Francisco-headquartered non-profit Mozilla Foundation supports the development of the popular web browser, Firefox. On Dec. 31, Mozilla announced that it was enabling crypto payments via Bitpay to cover donations.

However, this sparked a flurry of backlash from the community, much of it coming from the co-founder himself who clearly carries a lot of disdain for crypto.

Crypto Planet Killers

Zawinski responded to the Foundation’s announcement with this venom and expletive loaded outburst:

“Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters.”

The response echoed several of the replies which cited environmental concerns over crypto mining, much of which uses power-hungry proof-of-work number crunching. Programmer Peter Liss added to the sentiment stating “Hey Mozilla, I expect you don’t know me either, but I designed Gecko, the engine your browser is built on. And I’m 100% with @jwz [Jamie Zawinski] on this.”

Zawinski is also not fond of Web 3 labeling it as a “buzzword in search of a definition.”

In the pro-crypto corner was cryptographer and computer scientist Adam Back who said:

“The pair of you evidently know very little about Bitcoin if that’s what you’re talking about. If you know Greg Maxwell (ex-mozilla) why don’t you have an offline voice brain-dump form him and catchup before saying uninformed things. Just a suggestion.”

Dogecoin co-creator Billy Markus also chimed in stating that the anti-crypto ranting is far more insufferable than that coming from the pro-crypto camp.

reading the comments in this thread, as much as i rag on crypto bros being counterproductive at marketing, the vitriolic, hateful, hyperbolic, hypocritical, sanctimonious whining coming from the anti-crypto people is 1000x more insufferable than the pro-crypto people 🤷‍♂️ https://t.co/lJE8GJdYt3

— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) January 5, 2022

Mozilla Uturn

On Jan. 7, the Mozilla Foundation announced that it is reviewing its current policy on crypto donations and whether it “fits with our climate goals.”

Last week, we tweeted a reminder that Mozilla accepts cryptocurrency donations. This led to an important discussion about cryptocurrency’s environmental impact. We’re listening, and taking action. 1/4

— Mozilla (@mozilla) January 6, 2022

This also spurred more backlash such as the comments from Ethereum developer Lefteris Karapetsas who said it was a pity that Mozilla fell victim to the hysteria and hate on crypto that is seen around lately, before adding:

“Had just started using Firefox again to allow for some diversity against chrome’s engine but am switching back after seeing this.”

The browser may end up losing quite a few users following this u-turn, especially those involved in the crypto industry.