We’re excited to share the Q2 2025 Btrust Developer Grant recipients. This round features three new Starter Grant and two renewed Long Term grantees, all driving open-source Bitcoin development.
Check out the full list of grantees here:
Btrust Blog
Announcing Q2 2025 Btrust Developer Grant Recipients
Africa, July 2, 2025 — We are excited to present the recipients of our Q2 Starter Grants and welcome returning members to the Btrust Open-Source ...
Starter Grants empower talented engineers to contribute full-time to open-source Bitcoin development, giving them the flexibility and security to identify their specialty and deepen their community involvement.
Sulaiman Aminu Barkindo is focusing his efforts on the Validating Lightning Signer (VLS) project. With the support of the Starter Grant, he’ll be working on enhancing HTLC security, advancing on-chain state enforcement and disaster recovery, optimizing signer performance for rapid synchronization, and ensuring robust data persistence. He’s also expanding system test coverage and implementing advanced tools to bring VLS closer to production-readiness, helping make non-custodial, secure Lightning solutions more reliable and accessible, especially where self-custody is essential.
Peter Tyonum is making Bitcoin wallet development more approachable and powerful through the Bitcoin Dev Kit (BDK) libraries. He’s focused on releasing bdk-cli version 1.0.0, integrating new features like hardware wallet support, building advanced wallet templates, and improving compatibility with chain clients and RPC proxies. Peter will also be expanding documentation and contributing code reviews across the ecosystem.
Jamal ERRAKIBI is dedicating himself to boosting the stability and usability of rust-bitcoin. His priorities include regular code reviews, expanding documentation, improving serialization consistency, and helping guide core rust-bitcoin libraries towards a stable release. This work will support both core developers and newcomers as Bitcoin’s open-source foundation continues to grow.
The Btrust Long Term Grant helps experienced contributors continue making high-impact, sustainable advances in Bitcoin infrastructure. Both Long Term Grant renewals will provide two more years of dedicated support to each recipient.
Duncan Dean is working on the Lightning Development Kit, particularly advancing dual-funded channels. He is enabling funding contributions from channel acceptors, introducing robust APIs for channel initiators, and developing interactive fee-bumping. Duncan’s future plans include pioneering simple taproot channels to enhance privacy and exploring the integration of Point Time Locked Contracts.
Abubakar Sadiq Ismail is deepening his work on Bitcoin Core, focusing on fee estimation improvements and strengthening mempool infrastructure. He’s developing a cluster-aware fee estimator, contributing to multiprocess support and mining interface testing, and continuing to mentor new contributors, host review sessions, and advance his expertise in Bitcoin cryptography.
At Btrust, we believe supporting developer talent is key to a stronger, more decentralized Bitcoin. Our grant applications are open year-round, and new grantees are announced every quarter. If you’re passionate about contributing to Bitcoin open-source, we encourage you to apply.
Visit our website to learn more about our ongoing grant programs:
Grants
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