African Builders Shine at the Bitcoin++ Nairobi Hackathon
The historic Bitcoin++ Open Source Edition Hackathon recently concluded in Nairobi. Over the course of two intense days, 90 builders gathered from across Africa. Consequently, they transformed brilliant concepts into functional open-source projects.
Participants tackled real-world challenges across Bitcoin, Lightning, Nostr, and developer tooling. Ultimately, this massive collaboration produced an impressive showcase of regional engineering talent. As a dedicated African platform, we are incredibly proud to spotlight these sovereign builders.
Solving Pressing Open-Source Challenges
During the event, Btrust sponsored two highly technical challenge tracks. These specific challenges focused on improving ecosystem infrastructure and reducing maintainer fatigue.
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UTXOracle BTC Calculator: Developer Parrish won the “Best Contribution to Open Source” category. He built a Bitcoin price calculator powered entirely by a self-hosted node. Therefore, the service completely eliminates the need for centralized exchange APIs. Furthermore, he successfully submitted a pull request to integrate this tool into nix-bitcoin.
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Filter: John Osezele secured a joint victory in the “Solve Open Source Contribution Spam” category. He created a highly transparent GitHub application. Specifically, this app helps maintainers rapidly identify low-quality and AI-generated pull requests.
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Core-Gate: Aisha Omar Farah and Mary Wangui also won the anti-spam category. They designed a GitHub Actions workflow to automatically triage Bitcoin Core pull requests. Consequently, this tool drastically reduces contributor noise before human review occurs.
Crowning the Overall Hackathon Champions
The judges faced a difficult task evaluating the diverse range of submissions. Ultimately, three projects stood out for their exceptional utility and technical execution.
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First Place (WestToEast): Mamadou Diop built a powerful cross-border payment protocol. His system connects West African currencies directly to Kenyan Shillings via Lightning and LNURL. Therefore, WestToEast successfully bridges highly fragmented mobile money ecosystems across the continent.
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Second Place (Robin): Fidel Otieno and Chris Oketch developed an intelligent guide for aspiring open-source contributors. Rather than encouraging blind commits, Robin directs builders toward projects that perfectly match their specific skills.
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Third Place (nairobi2): This unique project functions as a permissionless ride-sharing platform. It seamlessly combines market-based price discovery with Bitcoin-based Sybil resistance.
Recognizing Specialized Category Winners
Beyond the main prizes, several developers claimed victory in highly specialized protocol tracks.
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Best Beginner Hack: Paul Eke built Hodlr, a savings application utilizing timelocks to prevent early fund withdrawals.
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Best Use of Soapbox: Thomas Cadra and Colly Sindani launched Dishi Fresh. This platform connects hungry users directly to local recipes and ingredient vendors.
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Best Mobile Broker Tool: Denver Mtange, Kelly Gakii, and Kendi Litala created LNpesa. This USSD-powered platform allows simple feature phones to access Lightning payments instantly.
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Best Use of Pontmore: Wesley Nyamu and Cynthia Muemi developed Pontswap. They successfully built a Nostr-native coordination layer for private Bitcoin-to-fiat conversions.
Highlighting Exceptional Honorable Mentions
The incredible depth of local talent produced several other standout tools. For instance, PoWR anchors developer reputation data directly on-chain. Meanwhile, Zaptip enables seamless Lightning tips straight to GitHub developer profiles.
Furthermore, SiriScore helps users analyze transaction privacy leaks before broadcasting to the network. In addition, MindfulSats leverages financial commitments to encourage positive daily habits. Finally, Tando’s Ark integrates Ark technology to create potentially fee-free M-PESA conversion channels.
The Future Belongs to African Builders
A massive thank you goes out to Alex Lewin, the organizing team, and the dedicated panel of judges. Evaluating technical feasibility and providing constructive feedback requires immense dedication.
To every builder, mentor, and judge involved: your efforts are actively shaping the future of money. Keep building. Keep contributing. Keep shipping.