Btrust 2024 In Review

Africa, Jan 18, 2025 — As Btrust continues to decentralize Bitcoin Open-Source Development in the Global South, it is essential to take a step back and recap all our important milestones and developments in 2024.

As etched in our genesis principles, transparency is at the core of Btrust. Therefore, we have both a responsibility and duty to share our activities throughout the year to the best of our abilities with the Global Bitcoin community and to make this kind of year-in-review report permanent for years to come.

Table of Contents

• The Btrust Mission
• Developments
• Btrust Activities
• Spend Overview
• Btrust Grants
• Btrust in 2025

The Btrust Mission

Since our inception in 2021, Btrust has been on a mission to decentralize Bitcoin development in the Global South. We are now the leading grant organization supporting African Bitcoin developers and have extended our efforts through our support of education programs in LATAM and India to help spur the development of Bitcoin in these regions, too.

Btrust is set up to challenge the status quo of Bitcoin development by supporting developers in regions where Bitcoin development is traditionally not as common to ensure that Bitcoin remains a global collaborative project built by and for the people. With this approach, we aim to positively contribute to the future of Bitcoin development and maintain a more robust Bitcoin.

Further, for Bitcoin to continue to thrive as a financial freedom tool for all and permissionless global technology, its development must be led by those who prioritize its utility and resilience to ensure that it continues to serve as a source of hope for a brighter and more abundant future.

"A people with a problem are in the best position to become a people with the solution" — Abubakar Nur Khalil (The Btrust Keynote, Africa Bitcoin Conference 2024)

Given the numerous challenges faced in the Global South, from lack of payment interoperability, record-high inflation, and broken rails to low access to electricity, by supporting developers from these regions to champion novel and battle-tested solutions that scale beyond their shores to everyone globally, we make Bitcoin stronger and increase its chances of serving future generations.

Developments

2024 served as a significant inflection point in the evolution and journey of Btrust as a leading force pushing Open-Source Bitcoin development in Africa and the Global South.

It marked our third year in operation and the year we fully transitioned into running an open-source cohort for Btrust Builders—Btrust's internal education program for training African Bitcoin developers—and, as such, set the ball rolling for our renewed streamlined approach to supporting open-source Bitcoin development, our strategy for outreach, and ultimately support via grants.

Training open-source developers in regions where it is not common comes with its unique set of challenges. Over the last few years, we have learned a lot about how best to approach the different aspects of effectively and sustainably onboarding and supporting open-source Bitcoin developers.

With our third cohort from our Btrust Builders program in 2024, we achieved several milestones, from attracting even more developers, including in North Africa, graduating the first female Bitcoin Core contributor in Africa, to a higher number of new open-source contributors across Bitcoin Core and several other projects in the Bitcoin open-source space.

From August to November, Btrust went through several key personnel and structural changes, with the appointment of an interim CEO, the promotion of Stephanie Titcombe to the Btrust Builders Program Lead, Sharon Murugi to Social Media and Comms Officer, and the hiring of Bitcoin engineer and former Btrust Grantee Kelvin Isievwore as Engineering Lead.

These changes enabled us to conclude the year on a high note across all key metrics. First, via a more focused approach towards achieving our mission, the introduction of essential structures, a significant push towards more transparency, the launch of our website and grant applications, a record number of grants issued, especially in Q3 and Q4, where we now support over six short and long-term Bitcoin developers—which includes the first set of long-term African Bitcoin Core developers being supported—to running our first Developer Day conference, in collaboration with the Africa Bitcoin conference.

Btrust Activities

Beyond delivering grants, Btrust also engages in supplementary activities to further seed the ecosystem. With our inaugural focus being Africa, in 2024, we saw the conclusion of our third Btrust Builders cohort, the Btrust gathering, the inaugural annual Btrust Developer Day, and the numerous BitDevs supported by Btrust across 5 African cities in 3 countries: Kaduna, Abuja, Lagos, Nairobi, and Accra.

Btrust Builders Cohort

Btrust Builders is the foundational structure for Btrust's operations and activities in Africa. It also serves as a template for all Bitcoin developer training we support as Africa continues establishing itself at the forefront of Bitcoin development.

In 2024, Btrust Builders graduated 17 Bitcoin developers and marked the first Btrust Builders cohort with an exclusively open-source focus.

Btrust Builders Mastering Bitcoin Study Groups

Btrust Builders also runs a 6-week Mastering Bitcoin study group dedicated to studying and analyzing the book Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos—a foundational prerequisite for Bitcoin developers.

In May 2024, Btrust Builders ran its mastering Bitcoin study group, where 55 participants joined, with 35 completing the program. The sessions were chaperoned by Btrust community developers, including past Btrust Builders and developers from the broader Bitcoin ecosystem.

BitDevs

We recognize the importance of spurring local Bitcoin community meetups as this provides a base for those interested in organizing, coordinating, sharing knowledge, and championing Bitcoin from the bottom up.

Btrust has supported BitDevs meetups in key African cities since 2023 to foster local Bitcoin understanding and create a thriving collaborative community for technical Bitcoin development.

In 2024, Btrust supported BitDevs in Kaduna, Nigeria; Lagos, Nigeria; Abuja, Nigeria; Nairobi, Kenya; and Accra, Ghana. We plan to expand to more cities and open and streamline the process for African Bitcoiners to launch a BitDevs and get supported by Btrust in 2025.

Btrust Gathering

Every year, a week out from the annual Africa Bitcoin Conference, Btrust assembles its open-source developers from its latest cohort, past cohorts working in Bitcoin open-source full-time, and grantees for a two-day gathering aimed at facilitating meaningful conversations around Bitcoin open-source, workshops and sessions, collating community feedback and brainstorming solutions, and mapping out the strategic outline for the upcoming year.

This year's gathering was held in Nairobi, Kenya, with the theme "Build Bitcoin, Beyond Borders: Advancing the Btrust Mission," where the focus was on consolidating all our efforts thus far, updating the community on our plans for 2025 and getting valuable feedback for improvements.

Btrust Developer Day

Following the interest we saw from developers at the 2023 Africa Bitcoin Conference, where we organized a developer track, it became clear that to cater to this level of developer interest and appetite sufficiently; we would need to hold a full-day developer day to ensure developers are given enough programming and actionable content.

In 2024, we held the first Btrust Developer Day in collaboration with the African Bitcoin Conference, which had over 250 attendees (~41% of the overall attendees at the Africa Bitcoin Conference). Speakers ranged from developers from Africa and beyond, Btrust grantees, to Co-Founder and Chairman at Block, Jack Dorsey.

Btrust intends to make the 1-day conference an annual conference in collaboration with the Africa Bitcoin Conference in 2025 and beyond.

Btrust LARP Sessions At The Africa Bitcoin Conference

As part of the Btrust activities for the Africa Bitcoin Conference, we ran the World Famous Bitcoin Live Action Role Play (LARP) session—a 2-hour hands-on session created in 2021 by Lightning Developer and Base58 founder Lisa Neigut (@niftynei) designed to teach Bitcoin concepts through a simulation of the Bitcoin network, allowing participants to learn about transactions, mining, and network security while exploring block creation, difficulty adjustments, and more.

At this year's Africa Bitcoin Conference, Btrust Builders program lead Stephanie Titcombe—the first African LARP trainer, following her training in Guadalajara, Mexico back in March—and Honolulu Bitcoin and Honolulu Bitdevs organizer Britney Taamu-Miyashiro, led two hour-long LARP sessions on the 9th and 11th, where over 40 attendees for each session.

Spend Overview

As an organization, Btrust's primary objective is to locate, educate, and support developers in the regions we serve. Consequently, most of our spending will be towards short and long-term support for developers.

2024 saw a significant increase in our overall spending, especially towards support for developers, where roughly 43.9% of all funding, which accounted for ~68% of all awarded grants, went to the 10 developer grants we awarded across the year, with ~77.78% of that awarded in the last two quarters of the year, alone.

Btrust Grants

It's important to note that while our primary goal is long-term support for Bitcoin developers, we also recognize the importance of a healthy developer pipeline.

Hence, we also support Bitcoin developer education programs and conferences, all to increase our pipeline, outreach, and the quality of the pipeline of new developers we help onboard to the Bitcoin open-source ecosystem.

Btrust Developer Grants

The Btrust developer grants serve as the backbone of our efforts, as our goal is to provide long-term support to developers in the regions we operate. To adequately provide developers with the appropriate support and resources, we have broken our developer grants into a starter grant and the Btrust Open-Source Cohort (BOSC).

The starter grant is a six-month program intended to support developers in determining a niche to work in the Bitcoin ecosystem, while our BOSC is for providing long-term support, 1 year initially with the option to renew for 2 years and beyond, to developers working on Bitcoin open-source with an existing focus or set of focuses.

In 2024, we onboarded five developers to our BOSC, where we previously had our inaugural and only member, Vladimir Fomene, before he departed from Open-Source to pursue Splice.Africa in early 2024.

In Q2 and Q3, we onboarded our first new set of long-term contributors, South African Lightning protocol engineer Duncan Dean, Nigerian Bitcoin core contributors Abubakar Sadiq Ismail and Oghenovo "Novo" Usiwoma, with the latter two, who were previously on Btrust starter grants, becoming the first long-term supported African Bitcoin core contributors.

Similarly, we also awarded starter grants to Kelvin Isievwore, who later became Btrust's Engineering Lead, Enigbe Ochekliye to work on Lightning Development Kit (LDK), and Tobechi Chukwuleta to work on BTCPay Server.

To conclude Q4, we awarded a starter grant to Abdullahi Yunus Ahmed for Polar & LND development, and previous starter grantees Enigbe and Tobechi joined the BOSC to continue their work on LDK and BTCPay Server, respectively.

Enigbe became the first female African Bitcoin & Lightning developer to receive long-term support, and Tobechi became the first African Bitcoin developer to receive long-term support to work on BTCPay Server.

What's important to note is that all but one BOSC member was a previous Btrust starter grantee, translating into 66.67% of starter grantees getting long-term support as they join the BOSC.

Btrust now supports six Bitcoin developers; one starter grantee, and five BOSC members, who work across Bitcoin Core, LDK, Polar, LND, and BTCPay Server.

Btrust Bitcoin Developer Education And Conference Grants

Given the nascency of the Bitcoin developer ecosystem in Africa and the other regions we serve, it is necessary to ensure that developers have the proper tools, resources, and support to pursue Bitcoin development. However, we can only be helpful to them if they know about us. Similarly, we can only create a vibrant ecosystem if there is an equally large and healthy pipeline of developers.

Therefore, we need to support education initiatives and conferences. The former helps create, train, and guide developers and provide necessary resources. The latter acts as a wide net to find and direct those interested in commencing their Bitcoin open-source journey.

Since its inception, Btrust has continued supporting the Africa Bitcoin Conference, from the first edition to the third in 2024. Along the way, we have also supported other conferences such as SatsConf 2023.

In 2024, we supported the Africa Bitcoin Conference and Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town. We determined these gatherings fit our criteria of having a significant developer angle, reaching out to developers, and being epicenters for attracting the best talent.

Once developers' interest in Bitcoin development is captured, they need a starting point. This is where our support for Bitcoin developer education projects comes into play, which led to Btrust's acquisition of Qala, now Btrust Builders, to support a developer program for African developers.

In addition to Btrust Builders, as our core Africa-wide education program, in 2024, we supported training programs in LATAM and India, specifically Bitcoin 4 Open-Source (B4OS) by Liberia De Satoshi in LATAM and Bitshala in India.

Additionally, In June 2024, Btrust sponsored the Bitcoin Lightning Development Bootcamp in Nairobi, Kenya, hosted by Africa Free Routing. The four-day event gathered around 50 developers to delve into the lightning network's potential for scalable, low-cost, and inclusive financial solutions. Participants delved into hands-on sessions and workshops covering payment channels, API integrations, and more. The sessions concluded with project presentations, certificate awards, and networking.

Btrust In 2025

As the base of developers interested in Bitcoin open-source development continues to grow, we believe it is incumbent on us to continue the hard work of streamlining and fine-tuning our activities to maximize output quality. We also intend to continue our work of consciously expanding into LATAM, India, and Brazil with our support and grant programs.

In 2025, as we begin to pilot out new structures, such as our grants sub-committees, open up all avenues of our grants, and the BOSS program for our third Btrust Builders cohort, we aim to ensure that Btrust is the first touch point for developers in Africa—as we provide them with the critical resources and training across varying skill levels—and also the destination—as we kick start their careers via starter grants and provide long-term support via our Btrust Open-Source Cohort (BOSC).

Furthermore, all grants will be processed through our Btrust sub-committees. We'll also add relevant application links to our Btrust website for our Btrust Bitcoin education program grant and Btrust Conference grants.

We intend to continue building off the successes in 2024 to standardize existing and new structures towards maximizing the support and resources we provide to the growing ecosystem of African developers to ensure they flourish and truly contribute meaningfully to decentralizing Bitcoin open-source development.

Btrust will always ensure we enable, not hinder, empower, and not dictate, and ultimately support and not gatekeep the next generation of Bitcoin open-source developers.

Onwards!