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

Quarterly Update Q1 2023

Quarterly Update Q1 2023

If you judge this quarter by the amount of work we got done, it was a busy one. But if you judge it by the number of links in this quarterly update, it’s still going. It will never end. Save yourselves.

The Book of Bitcoin Mythology: Vol. 2

The Book of Bitcoin Mythology: Vol. 2

Back by semi-popular demand, we’re covering and uncovering some commonly held myths about the security of bitcoin, from how much of a threat hackers really pose to whether lawmakers can legislate your coins out of existence.

A Bitcoin Development Framework

A Bitcoin Development Framework

Many bitcoin projects require funding and organizational support to stay afloat. We wrote about how individuals and institutions can work with project founders and their communities to sustain free and open-source bitcoin projects.

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.

  • Validating Lightning Signer
    Validating 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.

  • Wallet Scrutiny
    Wallet Scrutiny

    Not everyone has the time to painstakingly check what’s running on their wallet against public source code. But somehow, everyone at WS does.

Developer Grants

  • 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

    FOSS veteran (since 2005) with a focus on P2P and privacy. He's helped add support for Tor V3, I2P, and CJDNS in Bitcoin Core. Pretty nice of him.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • thunderbiscuit
    thunderbiscuit

    The Bitcoin Dev Kit expedites how engineers build bitcoin wallets. It’s among the most important projects we support. So, naturally, one of its leading developers is called thunderbiscuit.

  • Bitcoin Zavior
    Bitcoin Zavior

    Contributor to LDK and BDK. Photon project maintainer. Developing a React Native version of BDK. One of those grantees who’s tough to sum up without a) going over the word count, and b)

  • Ruben Somsen
    Ruben Somsen

    Spacechains developer and owner of no fewer than three iguanas. This probably isn’t true but the truth has never stopped us before.

  • Daniela Brozzoni
    Daniela Brozzoni

    Completing 'non-core' BDK modules. Writing BDK onboarding docs. Using timelocks and multiple keys to build user-friendly decaying multi-sig. Helping build the BDK Rust Library.

  • Johannes Hofmann
    Johannes Hofmann

    Bitcoin data scientist specializing in on-and-off-chain analysis. Easily the most professional headshot on this page. Just look at that swoosh. Swoosh!

  • Josh Kitman
    Josh Kitman

    Our first grantee working on Fedimints, Josh is also an actor whose credits include Anonymous webcasts and V for Vendetta, a movie about doing karate in a wig.

  • Justin Moellar
    Justin Moellar

    There's a lot to be said about Fedimint dev Justin Moellar, but this unintentionally hilarious line from his proposal says it best: "I have had exposure to almost every kind of database."

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.

  • 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.

  • Mogashni
    Mogashni

    UX specialist developing a UX Research Toolkit, contributing to the Wallet Improvement Project, and legally anything else we write here.

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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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?

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Doc Sharp
    Doc Sharp

    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.

  • 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.

@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

    Likable guy who thinks he's found his dream job. He doesn't know that his dream job has found him, too. And it's hungry.

  • Elias Rohrer

    Elias Rohrer

    He’s been called the greatest bitcoin developer of the mid-19th century. Confused, we hired him immediately.

  • Wilmer Paulino

    Wilmer Paulino

    One of the three most influential Lightning Network developers named Wilmer.

  • Gursharan Singh

    Gursharan Singh

    The 10th and final Spiral employee. There is no 11th. Don’t even bother looking for them, especially on this website.