At Vinteum, our mission is to foster open-source Bitcoin development by identifying and supporting talented contributors. As part of this effort, we are excited to announce the new cohort of Vinteum Fellows.
Why the Fellowship?
The Vinteum Fellowship is a structured phase of onboarding new open-source contributors, following the Bitcoin Dev Launchpad (BDL). Every fellow in this cohort was selected from the BDL’s in-person residency, the final stage of the program. The fellowship provides a six-month period of mentorship, structured learning, and real-world contributions to Bitcoin projects.
How does the Fellowship differ from Vinteum Grants?
- Grantees are more experienced contributors who work independently, setting their own scope and pacing for their projects.
- Fellows require more guidance. They work under the supervision of mentors, with well-defined scopes set in collaboration with the Vinteum team and project maintainers. They also provide frequent progress reports and are overseen by Vinteum’s Head of Engineering, Bruno Garcia.
Of the 22 participants from BDL’s final in-person phase, seven fellows are starting this six-month journey. This does not mean that the other participants failed or will not have future opportunities — BDL is just the beginning of their open-source journey.
Meet the Fellows
Luis Schwab
BDK
Vinteum has been working with Luis Schwab for some time now. We initially suggested that he participate in Summer of Bitcoin, where he contributed to Bitcoin Dev Kit (BDK). Additionally, he studied Bitcoin Protocol under Prof. Edil Medeiros at UnB, where he is a student.
For his fellowship, Schwab will work on bdk-floresta, a new backend option for BDK, alongside bdk-esplora and bdk-electrum crates. His work will involve significant collaboration with the Floresta team, led by Davidson Souza, and will be supervised by Leonardo Lima and Steve Myers. Schwab has already been in a three-month pilot fellowship, announced at Satsconf, and now transitions into a full six-month fellowship alongside the rest of the cohort.
João Leal
Floresta
João Leal was first a Summer of Bitcoin Fellow by our suggestion, as well as a resident at our hackerhouse Casa21. Like Schwab, he was also part of the pilot fellowship and now starts his six-month term. His focus will be on evaluating the best approach for Floresta’s consensus layer, assessing the trade-offs between extending its current implementation versus transitioning to Bitcoin Kernel. This includes understanding the implications of replacing the consensus logic with libbitcoinkernel and ensuring that any chosen path aligns with the project’s long-term goals and it’s rigorously tested. A second area of focus will be parallel improvements, such as packaging with Nix, documentation, code review, and error handling.
Lucas Balieiro
PlebLottery and StratumV2
Balieiro’s fellowship will focus on PlebLottery, a Rust-based hash rate aggregator designed for pleb-friendly and sovereign solo/lottery Bitcoin mining, and tower-stratum, a middleware framework for StratumV2. These projects interact heavily with Stratum V2, meaning Balieiro will likely encounter and contribute fixes and improvements to the latter. This experience will prepare him to potentially become a core Stratum V2 contributor in the long term. Plebhash, who designed the architecture of PlebLottery and tower-stratum, will guide his work.
QLRD
Krux and Floresta
Unlike our other fellows, QLRD has already been an open-source contributor for three years. However, due to his demanding full-time job, his contributions were limited to peripheral but impactful aspects of Krux (such as the installer).
Recognizing his potential, Vinteum aims to help QLRD expand into more core areas of Bitcoin Open-Source Software (BOSS). His fellowship will focus on expanding Krux’s test coverage while reinforcing Floresta’s integration and functional testing framework. This will ensure that both projects offer a reliable experience for developers and users alike, with a strong emphasis on integration and functional testing. This will ensure that both projects operate reliably and that end-user experiences remain seamless in real-world scenarios.
Erick Cestari
Rust-Bitcoin
Erick Cestari has already demonstrated strong potential at a young age. His fellowship will focus on Rust-Bitcoin, though without a specific initial project. He will work on good first issues, code reviews, and deepening his understanding of the project before taking on a more defined task.
Cestari will also contribute to BitcoinFuzz, a differential fuzzing project created by Bruno Garcia. During Bitcoin++, his hackathon team started LightningFuzz, implementing fuzzing targets for multiple Lightning implementations (LDK, lnd and NLightning). They will finalize and upstream their work while continuing contributions in parallel.
Moises Pompilio
LDK
Pompilio will focus his fellowship on the Lightning Development Kit (LDK) and the LKD-node. Initially, he will work on code reviews and beginner-friendly issues, gradually transitioning to a larger, long-term project in collaboration with the LDK team.
Additionally, like Cestari, he will continue contributing to BitcoinFuzz, particularly in advancing the LightningFuzz initiative from Bitcoin++.
Lucad70
Floresta
Lucad70 will also be contributing to Floresta, with a key focus on code review, documentation, and practical examples, making it significantly easier for newcomers and developers looking to integrate Floresta into their applications. This will make it significantly easier for newcomers and developers looking to integrate Floresta into their applications, while also deepening Lucad70’s own understanding of the project.
Looking Ahead
Vinteum is proud to support these talented developers as they transition to full-time open-source Bitcoin development. We believe these fellowships will empower new contributors and strengthen the broader Bitcoin ecosystem by enhancing key projects like Krux, Floresta, BDK, LDK, Rust-Bitcoin, and Stratum V2.
We look forward to seeing their progress over the next six months!
