Making bitcoin more than an investment.

Bitcoin is the best money. It should be used like it. We build and fund free, open-source projects aimed at making bitcoin the planet’s preferred currency.

Latest Updates

Spiral is Hiring a Creative Lead

Spiral is Hiring a Creative Lead

Are you ready for the biggest job in bitcoin? Do you want to educate the world about this century’s most important technology? Will you fight the evil fiat empire in the name of sound money, fairness, and a better financial future?

We were Square Crypto. Now we’re Spiral

We were Square Crypto. Now we’re Spiral

Once Square decided to rebrand, we knew it was time for our own long-overdue name change. After all, Square Crypto was never the best name for our team.

Spiral is hiring bitcoin engineers

Spiral is hiring bitcoin engineers

Spiral is hiring three engineers. Are you one of them? Here’s who you are, what you’ll work on, and most of what you need to know.

Projects

Lightning Development Kit
Lightning Development Kit
Bitcoin Design Community
Bitcoin Design Community
Bitcoin Development Kit
Bitcoin Development Kit

Spiral Grants

Get paid in bitcoin to work on bitcoin. Our grant process financially supports developers and designers in over a dozen countries and counting.

Organization Grants

  • BTCPay Server
    BTCPay Server

    Not just our first grant recipient, but our first to receive two more. BTCPay Server is an open-source payments processor that squanders money on ironic business cards.

  • Lightning Signer
    Lightning Signer

    Really basic LN infrastructure project that improves security by enabling signed transactions within enterprise HSMs, mobile phone secure elements, and hardware wallets.

  • The Eye of Satoshi
    The Eye of Satoshi

    LN-focused watchtower that monitors blockchain transactions for malicious channel peers attempting to take off with other people’s beautiful coins.

  • Chris Belcher’s CoinSwap
    Chris Belcher’s CoinSwap

    An evolution of the techniques pioneered by CoinJoins, CoinSwap helps you stick it to the man by substantially improving bitcoin’s privacy and fungibility.

  • Mempool
    Mempool

    The recipient of our first-ever bitcoin-denominated grant, Mempool is the only bitcoin block explorer that doesn’t look like it was designed under duress.

  • Summer of Bitcoin
    Summer of Bitcoin

    Global summer internship program focused on introducing university students to bitcoin and open-source development. In addition to funding the program, interns receive $2,500 in bitcoin and cursed jewelry.

Developer Grants

  • ZmnSCPxj
    ZmnSCPxj

    A Lightning and C-Lightning legend, there’s only so much we can say about ZmnSCPxj. But we won’t even say that because no one called ZmnSCPxj is in it for the limelight.

  • Jon Atack
    Jon Atack

    Once accurately described as “the bitcoin dev who looks the most like they could body you at Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2,” Jon’s been going ham on Core for a minute now, man.

  • Vasil Dimov
    Vasil Dimov

    15-year FOSS Veteran with a P2P and privacy focus working to add support for Tor V3 to Core. Pretty nice of him.

  • Steve Myers
    Steve Myers

    Developer developing the Bitcoin Development Kit, an all-in-one resource that makes it 10x easier for developers to develop on-chain bitcoin wallets. Develop.

  • Lloyd Fournier
    Lloyd Fournier

    If applied cryptography experimentation library, alternative LN payment channel construct, and open DLC-based oracle spec mean anything to you... Lloyd?

  • Gary Fuches
    Gary Fuches

    Passionate advocate for SegWit 2x and blockchain technology, Gary was our intern only a year before receiving our largest developer grant ever. God only knows what he did with it.

  • Gloria Zhao
    Gloria Zhao

    The first Brink Fellow, Gloria is working on Package Mempool Accept, which makes second layer protocols like Lightning and unlimited breadsticks safer, more reliable, and private.

  • Fi3
    Fi3

    Another pseudonymous dev. Fi3 is helping develop Stratum V2, a neutral FOSS implementation that can be used by any miner or mining pool in possession of the magic ring.

  • Dhruv Mehta
    Dhruv Mehta

    Stick figure and Core contributor working on BIP324, leveraging the bitcoin-seeder to allow authenticated seeds, automation, and fuzz testing coverage.

  • Raj Maitra
    Raj Maitra

    Rust ecosystem and Bitcoin Development Kit contributor. First dev in India doing funded FOSS bitcoin work. Rabbit hole enthusiast. Actual rabbit.

  • John Cantrell
    John Cantrell

    Pseudonymous dev named after a character from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, a giant book that every developer owns but hasn’t read. John is using BDK and LDK to build a boundary pushing wallet.

Designer Grants

  • Christoph Ono
    Christoph Ono

    Designer bringing decentralized structure to the 1000+ person Bitcoin Design Community. As the first designer grant recipient, he takes the blame if things don't work out.

  • Johns Beharry
    Johns Beharry

    Hybrid product designer bringing order to on-chain, layer 2, CoinJoins, BLTs, PayJoins, and PSBTs by helping develop the payments section of the Bitcoin Design Guide.

  • Daniel Nordh
    Daniel Nordh

    A contributor to the Bitcoin Design Community since before it was a community, Daniel is helping create the private key management section of the Bitcoin Design Guide.

  • Pavlenex
    Pavlenex

    His cred as a bitcoin PM netted him a grant despite the fact that he tried to bribe us by stuffing live carp into our mailboxes. And the Bitcoin Design Guide is better for it.

  • Stephen DeLorme
    Stephen DeLorme

    Designer helping add Lightning Network best practices to the Bitcoin Design Guide. Recipient of the best grant announcement tweet (and perhaps best tweet) of all time.

  • Bosch
    Bosch

    Pseudonymous designer focused on adding Lightning UX resources to the Bitcoin Design Guide so that by the time Lightning is ubiquitous, even bankers will know how to use it.

Alumni

  • Tankred Hase
    Tankred Hase

    UX-focused dev building Photon, a FOSS library that simplifies how new users get coins off exchanges. No more 24-word seeds. Just enter a PIN and go. But where will you go?

  • Justin Sun
    Justin Sun

    Our most well-known grantee by far, Justin Sun created Moon University, an open-source bitcoin video library. Now he’s helping two other grantees build BDK.

  • Thorbjørn König
    Thorbjørn König

    Thorbjørn brings 20 years of design experience to radically rethinking how people manage their private keys. Don't worry. We vetted him.

  • Jamaal Montasser
    Jamaal Montasser

    Researcher deepening our understanding of how people use (and most likely don’t use) the Bitcoin Core wallet, placing particular emphasis on UX, engineering, and accessibility.

  • Maggie Valentine
    Maggie Valentine

    Designer simplifying wallet onboarding flows by reducing technical jargon and increasing user education, ultimately making bitcoin accessible to more people. Even copywriters.

  • Patricia Estevão
    Patricia Estevão

    What motivates people to use bitcoin? What do people hope to gain from bitcoin? Is bitcoin a sandwich? Just some of the questions this UX designer and researcher aims to answer.

  • Riccardo Casatta
    Riccardo Casatta

    FOSS dev building BDK and Firma, didn’t read the grant before signing it and is now condemned to spend eternity aboard a ghost ship where everyone refers to bitcoin as blockchain.

  • Leon Johnson
    Leon Johnson

    The creator of Advancing Bitcoin, Leon is working on so many things that it is kind of hard to capture them all in six lines. So I won't try.

@spiralbtc

Small team. Big mission. Medium-sized everything else.

  • Steve Lee

    Steve Lee

    Just a regular bitcoin PM who doesn’t cast a shadow for some reason.

  • Val Wallace

    Val Wallace

    Lightning Network stan and author of our popular Twitter account.

  • Arik Sosman

    Arik Sosman

    8p4K2a3Ag7X0yWng4pGzKZ8eQP04z4AJF0i7kYT11jQ3jtHGym0xHqCZFt1ZzOLQBZT/UStxpeAieZfd1J7Tp7XU21SpUMaH4kPJ3cCu377mUh7+/kFw7a

  • Jeff Czyz

    Jeff Czyz

    Long-distance runner. Contemplative developer. Online dating profile with a lot to be desired.

  • Matt Corallo

    Matt Corallo

    Dev proficient in HTML and CSS. Known for his diverse sense of style and passive approach to social media.

  • Haley Berkoe

    Haley Berkoe

    FUD-busting PM. Advocate for women in bitcoin. First Spiral team member to venture into the basement and live to tell about it.

  • Conor Okus

    Conor Okus

    Just a nice, chill guy who thinks he’s found his dream job. What he doesn’t know is that all 50-feet of it are about to find him.