The Year in Brief
Vinteum’s fourth year was about becoming a more durable organization. After three years of building programs and helping form a technical Bitcoin community in Brazil, the past twelve months focused on continuity: supporting established contributors, helping emerging developers move toward sustained open-source careers, and building stronger internal systems.
Contributors supported by Vinteum now work across Bitcoin Core, rust-bitcoin, Lightning, wallets, mining, privacy, testing, cryptography, network observability, and alternative node implementations. Many have also secured grants, jobs, and project relationships beyond Vinteum itself.
Contributors and Fellows
Vinteum grants give experienced contributors the continuity to take on deeper responsibilities within open-source projects. During the year, grantees advanced work across projects including Bitcoin Core, Floresta, Stratum V2, BTCPay Server, BitcoinFuzz, P2Poolv2, and LND, contributing not only code but also testing, security research, review, project governance, and mentorship.
The results of the first Bitcoin Dev Launchpad cohort also became clearer. Alumni secured independent grants, joined Bitcoin companies, and became Vinteum grantees themselves, reinforcing a central lesson: there is no single path into Bitcoin open source.
The second cohort was reshaped by the growing use of AI. Evaluation moved away from output alone and toward individual discussion, iterative review, and participants’ ability to explain and defend their decisions. The 13 current fellows are contributing to a wide range of Bitcoin open-source projects and research areas. Their progress is measured by depth, judgment, and growing independence rather than pull-request volume.
Building the Ecosystem
Vinteum continued developing the broader environment around Bitcoin open-source work in Brazil. Casa21 remained its physical hub in São Paulo, while study groups, office hours, public mentorship, and the weekly Show and Tell brought contributors together online.
BitDevs communities now meet regularly in nine Brazilian cities, and initiatives such as Bitcoin Students Day, Hack4Freedom, workshops, and technical events created new entry points into the ecosystem.
Vinteum also helped contributors build stronger connections with the global Bitcoin ecosystem through conferences, workshops, residencies, and in-person collaboration. During the year, Vinteum-supported contributors participated in activities across Brazil, Europe, and the United States, creating opportunities to work directly with maintainers, researchers, and other open-source developers.
At the same time, Vinteum expanded relationships with research institutions in Brazil and abroad, working to connect rigorous academic investigation with the problems faced by open-source developers.
Internally, leadership became more clearly defined across strategy, engineering, research, governance, and operations. Thaiz Batista joined as Head of Operations, helping turn processes that developed organically into systems that can be documented, delegated, and maintained over time.
Looking Ahead
Vinteum is especially grateful to Xapo Bitcoin Limited, ₿trust, OpenSats, and the other organizations and individuals whose support makes long-term work in security, maintenance, mentorship, and research possible.
The next challenge is not simply to bring more people into Bitcoin development. Intensive mentorship is difficult to scale, and the ecosystem’s capacity to absorb new contributors is finite. The goal is to help more people become independent, trusted, and sustained contributors, supported by stronger operations and more continuous entry points through seminars, universities, BitDevs, online communities, and Casa21.