Btrust

Celebrating Duncan Dean’s Journey with Btrust

Btrust

Btrust

— 3 min read
Celebrating Duncan Dean’s Journey with Btrust

At Btrust, we’ve been fortunate to support developers whose work strengthens the foundations of Bitcoin. Today, we celebrate the journey of Duncan Dean, who joined us as a long-term grantee in April 2024 and whose time with us concluded in August 2025.

His contributions extended well beyond code. Over the past year and a half, he’s worked tirelessly on dual-funded channels in the Lightning Development Kit (LDK), collaborated with contributors across the ecosystem, and represented Btrust on global stages. Though this chapter closes, Duncan’s journey in Bitcoin open-source development continues, and we can’t wait to see where it leads.

A Legacy of Technical Contributions

Duncan first began contributing to LDK in 2021, and his time at Btrust accelerated some of the most significant progress to date.

  • Dual-funding in LDK: He led the implementation enabling dual-funded channels, with PR 3137 and subsequent refinements such as PR 3423 and PR 3637. This work not only pushed dual-funding closer to completion but also laid much of the logical groundwork for splicing.
  • Interactive Transaction Construction: Building on his early designs, Duncan contributed to the implementation of interactive transaction construction, a prerequisite for both dual-funding and splicing.
  • Spec Contributions: His work surfaced new issues and improvements for the BOLTs specifications on dual-funding and splicing, contributing upstream fixes and refinements.
  • Broader Open-Source Maintenance: Duncan played a key role in maintaining LNDK, improved its release process, and continued maintaining the Liana wallet package in NixOS/nixpkgs.

Duncan’s technical impact reached far beyond Btrust. His contributions were highlighted multiple times in the Bitcoin Optech newsletter, demonstrating his impact on the broader developer ecosystem.

Representing Btrust Around the World

His contributions extended well beyond code. As part of his grant, he represented Btrust and the open-source Bitcoin developer community at major events worldwide:

At each of these gatherings, he not only shared updates on dual-funding and LDK but also advocated for the importance of open-source contributions and mentorship in Bitcoin.

Reflections on the Btrust Journey

When asked about his time with Btrust, Duncan shared: “Being a grantee at Btrust was, first and foremost, the best grantee experience I had throughout my grant-funded open source development career so far. One of the challenges in grant programs often shares a common thread of isolation and breakdown of communication between grantee and grantor. With Btrust’s evolution to a more structured approach, this common challenge was mitigated to a high degree.”

He also highlighted the sense of community, regular meetings, and reporting cadence as aspects that worked well, along with the support he received for conference applications, travel, and accommodations.

Looking back, he added: “The Btrust grant allowed me to continue working on LDK, which I initially started contributing to in 2021. The dual-funding project has made serious progress over my time at Btrust and has accelerated other contributors’ work on splicing. It’s been deeply rewarding to contribute to such an important piece of infrastructure, and I’ve really appreciated the freedom and support to work where I can be most helpful.”

What’s Next for Duncan

In September 2025, Duncan began a new chapter with Second building Bark, an open-source Ark implementation in Rust. He will continue contributing to LDK and the Lightning Network protocol through this work.

He also plans to:

  • Grow BitDevs Johannesburg into a strong local hub, potentially feeding talent into the Btrust Builders program.
  • Run Bitcoin-in-Rust workshops alongside the Socratic Seminars.
  • Develop interactive Rust tutorials to onboard new contributors to projects like LDK and Bark.
  • Provide mentorship to future Btrust grantees working on LDK and related projects.
As he puts it: “Contributions to Bitcoin, or other public goods, can often feel akin to offering your services of carpentry, masonry, or artistry to a cathedral of code and prose overshadowing everything else you do in life. We tell ourselves that the work is (mysterious and) important, and we are doing our part for the future of money. However, we must remember that Bitcoin is just a tool and not a religion. The only thing that would come of not looking after the most important parts of your life: contributors on the brink of burnout.”

Duncan has remained an active part of our community. He participated in our recently concluded gathering and spoke at the 2025 Btrust Developer Day, where he presented a session on how Ark and the Lightning Network can work together to unlock new possibilities for Bitcoin payments.

Thank You, Duncan

On behalf of everyone at Btrust, thank you, Duncan. Thank you for your dedication to advancing Bitcoin infrastructure, for representing Btrust on global stages, and for being an advocate for open-source development in Africa and beyond.

We’re proud to call Duncan a Btrust alumnus and friend, and we’re excited to follow his continued impact on Bitcoin open source.

All the best in your journey ahead.

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