Btrust 2025 Year in Review

Global Majority, April 9, 2026 — 2025 was a pivotal year for us at Btrust, as it marked the start of what we believe will serve as the generational foundation for the organization and Btrust Builders for years to come.

Following a few years of experimentation, iteration, and learning alongside our communities, in 2025, all that work crystallized into a more wholesome, structured execution phase. We focused on strengthening our programs, partnerships, and internal systems that demonstrated the most real impact, rather than rolling out numerous new initiatives.

We centered our year on refining how we sustainably execute our mandate to support open-source developers across Africa and the broader Global Majority by carefully threading various independent pockets of developer communities into a unified system. Including increased focus on building long-term pathways that enable developers to discover Bitcoin, contribute to its open-source infrastructure, and have a meaningful global impact.

This review highlights what we built, what we learned, and how we are positioning Btrust for the years ahead.

Table of Contents

• The Btrust Mission
• 2025 Overview
• Building Across the Global Majority
• Btrust Builders
• Btrust Grants
• Spend Overview
• Btrust Activities & Ecosystem Engagement
• Operations & Ecosystem Growth
• Btrust in 2026

The Btrust Mission

Btrust exists to decentralize Bitcoin development.

Bitcoin, as a global technology, is designed to operate without centralized control. Yet, its development has, unfortunately, historically remained concentrated in a few regions, with many of the communities that rely most on it, particularly in Africa and the broader Global Majority, featuring on the outskirts of its developer ecosystem.

Btrust exists to help address this dilemma.

Created in 2021 as a blind, irrevocable trust funded by a 500 BTC donation from Jack Dorsey and Shawn Carter (Jay‑Z), we are ushering in a new paradigm in which Bitcoin is built by open-source engineers from regions that rely on it the most—the Global Majority. We initially focused on Africa as a foundational base and have since expanded our reach to Latin America and India.

In line with our mission’s founding ethos of decentralization, our original donors have no direct operational influence over the organization’s governance or activities.

2025 Overview

2025 was a defining year in the evolution of Btrust. Central to our work was the resolute focus on our core mission of decentralizing Bitcoin open‑source development by increasing participation from Africa and the broader Global Majority.

Doing this requires building a full ecosystem for open-source developers that streamlines learning, charts a clear path to impactful contributions, and supports their growth.

Throughout the year, we worked to strengthen this developer pipeline across several layers and focused on improving each part of this pipeline, we were able to scale our reach while maintaining the quality of the programs and support structures around them. The year was also fueled by deep collaboration with organizations across the broader Bitcoin ecosystem.

Across all programs and initiatives, Btrust engaged with more than 3,800 developers globally in 2025, reflecting growing interest in Bitcoin open‑source work across Africa, Latin America, India, and other parts of the Global Majority.

Overall, 2025 was less about rapid expansion and more about building a strong, resilient foundation. Btrust is now more well-positioned to support the growing global network of Bitcoin developers while continuing to strengthen the role of the Global Majority in shaping the future of Bitcoin’s open‑source ecosystem.

Building Across the Global Majority

Over time, we aim for Btrust to serve both as a starting point and a destination for Bitcoin developers across Africa. For many engineers, their journey into Bitcoin development begins through community initiatives, study groups, or programs such as Btrust Builders, where they first encounter the technical foundations of the protocol and the open‑source ecosystem surrounding it. These entry points help developers understand how Bitcoin works, how open‑source collaboration functions, and where they can begin contributing.

As developers traverse this path, Btrust is increasingly becoming a destination where they can deepen their work through mentorship, grants, and long‑term support, contributing to Bitcoin infrastructure. In this way, we are creating a continuous pipeline that moves developers from early curiosity to meaningful open‑source contributions and, in many cases, sustainable careers working on Bitcoin.

While Africa remains a core base for our work, decentralizing Bitcoin development requires building a broader network of contributors across the Global Majority. In 2025, we expanded our engagement in Latin America and India, where strong and growing developer ecosystems are already emerging.

In Latin America, Btrust supported developer education and open‑source initiatives through programs such as Librería de Satoshi’s Bitcoin for Open Source (B4OS) and Vinteum, which play a critical role in funding and mentoring open‑source Bitcoin developers across the region. In India, we continued our support for Bitshala, a developer education initiative focused on building strong technical foundations for engineers interested in contributing to Bitcoin.

Supporting these initiatives alongside our work in Africa helps terraform an interconnected developer ecosystem across the Global Majority. As developers in these regions collaborate, share knowledge, and contribute to the same open‑source projects, they collectively expand the global base of engineers shaping Bitcoin’s future.

Btrust Builders

The Btrust Builders program continues to serve as one of the most important entry points into Bitcoin open‑source development for engineers across Africa and the Global Majority.

Throughout 2025, the program expanded both in reach and structure, introducing more developers to the technical foundations of Bitcoin and helping them progress toward real open‑source contributions.

Across the Builders ecosystem and its different learning pathways and open‑source training programs, the initiative received more than 1,800 applications, reflecting the strong growth in awareness of Bitcoin development opportunities among engineers in emerging ecosystems.

For a closer look at the program, including its curriculum, mentorship structures, and the developers who participated throughout the year, check out the full Btrust Builders 2025 year in review blog to see everything the Builders community got up to.

Btrust Grants

Supporting the Bitcoin open-source ecosystem financially remains one of the most important parts of Btrust’s mission.

Open‑source development requires pouring in time and focus, and for many engineers in emerging ecosystems, contributing to Bitcoin infrastructure full‑time can be difficult without financial support. Btrust grants are designed to address this gap by providing developers and ecosystem initiatives with the resources needed to build, mentor, and educate within the Bitcoin open‑source ecosystem.

Developer Grants

In 2025, Btrust awarded over $2 million in grants, with 39.7% of funding going directly to developers contributing to open‑source Bitcoin infrastructure.

These grants supported developers contributing to a range of open-source projects across the Bitcoin ecosystem, including Bitcoin Core, the Lightning Development Kit (LDK), BDK, Rust‑Bitcoin, Stratum V2, BTCPay Server, and other tools that form part of the technical backbone of Bitcoin.

Across the year, 18 Btrust grantees contributed to 15 open‑source projects across the Bitcoin stack. Together, their work resulted in 431 commits, 222 merged pull requests, and 475 code reviews, helping strengthen and improve the tools that developers, businesses, and users rely on throughout the Bitcoin ecosystem.

We recently published a blog that breaks down the projects they worked on, the technical contributions they made, and the broader impact their work had across the Bitcoin stack.

In line with our mission to support developers working on open-source projects within the Bitcoin ecosystem, Btrust’s impact is also reflected in the growing adoption and recognition of open‑source infrastructure supported by our grantees. Through targeted funding and developer support, Btrust grantees actively contribute to critical Bitcoin projects that are widely used across the ecosystem.

As such, Btrust was endorsed as an Associate Member of the BDK Foundation, recognizing our role in enabling contributors working on the Bitcoin Dev Kit (BDK). Similarly, Btrust is recognized as a Supporter and Funder of Stratum V2, as highlighted on the Stratum V2 website, following sustained contributions from our grantees to the protocol’s development. These recognitions highlight our broader impact across multiple layers of the Bitcoin stack, as we strengthen Global Majority representation and long‑term stewardship of Bitcoin’s core infrastructure by backing developers whose work directly advances the network's decentralization, security, and resilience.

Education Grants

Alongside developer grants, Btrust also continued supporting the broader ecosystem through education grants.

Education grants were directed toward programs that train and mentor new Bitcoin developers in regions where technical resources are limited. These initiatives help expand the pipeline of engineers entering the Bitcoin open‑source ecosystem and strengthen long‑term developer capacity across the Global Majority.

Event Grants

Event grants focus on supporting conferences, workshops, and technical gatherings that bring developers together to collaborate, share knowledge, and showcase their work.

These events play an important role in helping developers build relationships, discover open‑source opportunities, and engage more deeply with the global Bitcoin community.

Together, developer grants, education grants, and event support form a comprehensive funding approach that strengthens both individual contributors and the broader ecosystem around them.

Spend Overview

Similar to 2024, the majority of Btrust’s spending in 2025 was focused on supporting developers and strengthening the ecosystem around them, as we believe that the health of an ecosystem is tied to the strength of communities, programs, and the resilience of the infrastructure that supports developers.

We supported initiatives that helped connect developers, expand technical communities, and surface new contributors across Africa and the Global Majority. These efforts ranged from grassroots developer meetups to international conferences.

BitDevs in Africa

In 2025, Btrust supported 13 active BitDevs locations across 9 countries, spanning West Africa, East Africa, and Central Africa. These are Bitcoin meetups that follow a Socratic seminar format, where developers gather to discuss recent developments in the Bitcoin protocol, Lightning Network infrastructure, and related open‑source projects.

All 13 BitDevs communities collectively hosted more than 70 meetups, bringing together approximately 1,900 developers in person.

BitDevs provides a space where engineers can learn collaboratively, stay informed about protocol developments, and begin participating in technical discussions that mirror those happening in more established Bitcoin developer communities globally.

To support the growing demand of BitDevs communities, we developed and released the BitDevs Playbook, an open resource designed to support organizers across the Global Majority. In it we document practical lessons from several years of supporting technical meetups across Africa and provide guidance on how to organize, sustain, and grow Bitcoin developer communities while maintaining the open, collaborative spirit that defines the BitDevs model.

Representation at Global Conferences

Another key component of our ecosystem work in 2025 involved participating in major conferences and developer gatherings across the world.

Over the course of the year, Btrust was represented at sixteen conferences across Africa, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. These events ranged from highly technical developer gatherings to broader open‑source and freedom‑technology conferences.

Btrust grantees played a leading role in these engagements, attending 10 conferences and speaking at 9 of them. Through talks, workshops, and technical discussions, they shared their work with the wider Bitcoin ecosystem while building relationships with maintainers, educators, and fellow contributors.

Alongside this, members of the broader Btrust team were present across these events to amplify awareness of our programs, connect with emerging developers, and highlight pathways into Bitcoin open‑source development through initiatives like Btrust Builders and our grants.

For many developers supported by Btrust, these conferences provided valuable opportunities to present their work publicly, collaborate directly with other contributors, and deepen their involvement in Bitcoin infrastructure.

Conferences are also key discovery points where developers first encounter Bitcoin open‑source development, and where Btrust can both support existing contributors and welcome new ones into the ecosystem.

The Btrust Annual Gathering

In November 2025, we hosted the Btrust Annual Gathering, where for the first time, we brought together Btrust grantees, alumni, and contributors from across Africa, India, and Latin America for the two-day event to reflect on the past year and plan for the next.

Over the two days, we held workshops, technical discussions, and strategic conversations about developer pathways, open‑source sustainability, and opportunities for deeper collaboration across regions. These surfaced several important insights around mentorship structures, contributor support systems, and the challenges developers face when building open‑source careers in emerging ecosystems.

More broadly, the gathering reinforced the importance of building stronger connections between developers working across different parts of the Global Majority and helped shape several initiatives that will continue into the coming years.

Btrust Developer Day

In 2025, our flagship one-day developer conference returned, this time in Mauritius, where it brought together approximately 265 developers, students, and ecosystem participants for a full day of technical learning and collaboration. The event featured more than twenty technical sessions alongside lightning talks, workshops, and product demonstrations focused on Bitcoin infrastructure and open‑source development.

Topics ranged from practical development workflows and Lightning node setup to emerging privacy technologies and new tools within the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The Btrust Developer Day also served as a platform for African developers to showcase their work to a global audience, with 538 viewers tuning in live and the replay now surpassing 1.1k views. It also created opportunities to engage directly with contributors and organizations across the global Bitcoin ecosystem.

Building a Global Developer Ecosystem

Taken together, all these activities reflect Btrust’s broader approach to ecosystem development. Supporting open‑source contributors requires more than funding alone; it requires strong communities, spaces for collaboration, and opportunities for developers to engage with the global Bitcoin ecosystem.

Through initiatives such as BitDevs meetups, conference participation, developer gatherings, and community playbooks, Btrust continues working to build the infrastructure that allows Bitcoin developer communities to grow organically across Africa and the wider Global Majority.

Operations & Ecosystem Growth

In 2025, Btrust strengthened its operational and communications foundations to better support Bitcoin development across Africa and the Global Majority. Internally, we improved financial, legal, and grant systems to reduce friction while maintaining transparency, alongside appointing Abubakar Nur Khalil as CEO to ensure leadership continuity and strategic focus. Externally, we expanded our presence across platforms including X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Nostr, YouTube, and media outlets, reaching millions through content that highlighted developer work, programs, and educational resources, bringing more builders into the Bitcoin open-source ecosystem.

Btrust in 2026

The work of decentralizing Bitcoin development is a long‑term effort.

As we look ahead to 2026, in building on our structures to ensure long‑term institutional resilience, we will prioritize governance improvements and increased board transparency as we navigate our first board cycling.

We will continue to deepen collaboration and coordination with ecosystem partners through even more structured partnership frameworks that support developer mobility between education programs, grants, and open‑source contribution opportunities.

Additionally, we are focused on expanding opportunities for female Bitcoin developers and building on our success in this arena. Through mentorship programs, education pathways, and grant support, we aim to make Bitcoin development more accessible for women across the Global Majority.

In 2025, we strengthened the foundations that make our work possible. The progress we have recorder across developer education, open‑source contributions, and global ecosystem growth reinforces our belief that a more geographically distributed Bitcoin development community is already emerging.

Our role is to continue supporting it.

Onwards!