I believe the first major funding by the Rust Foundation was hiring Ferrous to help develop and maintain crates.io: https://foundation.rust-lang.org/posts/202

I believe the first major funding by the Rust Foundation was hiring Ferrous to help develop and maintain crates.io: https://foundation.rust-lang.org/posts/2021-10-18-crates-io-oncall-ferrous-systems/ https://foundation.rust-lang.org/posts/2021-10-18-crates-io-...