With our new multi-part newsletter comes a new approach to writing quarterly updates, introducing cutting-edge, streamlined technologies called bullet points. Gone are the days of 1,500+ word, 20+ paragraph blog posts that no one, including us, ever read. With these new quarterly Spiral Progress Reports, we’ll be providing you with only the highest-level updates, summaries, and regrettable jokes that we included because we started late and ran out of time to workshop them.
Subscribe to our Substack for weekly updates about our team carefully disguised as entertainment delivered directly to your inbox.
More than Code
A lot is happening at Spiral HQ besides people contributing little green squares to LDK’s GitHub repository. Here’s a taste of what else we’re doing to make bitcoin the planet’s preferred currency:
- @HBerkoe and @moneyball poured about a million hours into helping launch Presidio Bitcoin, the Bay Area's first bitcoin co-working and events space.
- Check out the panel about open source’s value filmed at Presidio Bitcoin that Spiral Lead Steve Lee moderated. It features Jack Dorsey, David Marcus, and Alex Gladstein.
- Steve, DK, and @MaxAWebster started a weekly podcast called "Presidio Bitcoin Jam," or, as we prefer to call it, “PBJ.” The show explores the latest bitcoin topics, simplifies technical concepts, and describes use cases and bitcoin’s effect on the financial system. Tune in every Friday at 12PM PT on YouTube, or subscribe on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
- Speaking of podcasts filmed at Presidio Bitcoin, Haley launched “21 in 21," where she asks tech and bitcoin personalities visiting Presidio Bitcoin 21 questions in 21 minutes, with Jack Dorsey being the latest to take the hot seat. Reach out to haley@spiral.xyz if you’d like the Internet to watch you be grilled by one of bitcoin’s smallest people for 21 minutes. Subscribe on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
- @ConorOkus appeared on Stephan Livera’s show to discuss improving bitcoin payment UX. Steve’s been making the rounds, visiting Citadel Dispatch to talk about the trade-offs of Bitkey, potential improvements to the platform, and soft fork proposals for bitcoin vault functionality.
- @TheBlueMatt and @theinstagibbs are scheduled to speak at bitcoin++ on May 7-9 in Austin, while @theinstagibbs will also speak at OPNEXT on April 11–12 in Tysons, Virginia.
- We renewed grants for the Bitcoin Design Foundation, Bitcoin Dev Kit Foundation, Justin Moeller, whilst a new grantee, Leo, was welcomed into the Spiral Extended Crew.
- We’re considering making everyone on the team run a Bitaxe. Please steal this idea.
Lumpy and Grumpy
Grumpy-cute. Not only is it a thing, it’s a good thing. And nowhere is it more of a thing than with bitcoin’s furriest open-source mascots, Bitty and Itty Bitty.
- This quarter, with the launch of our new multi-newsletter platform, we published two issues of Plushie Confidential. The first highlighted Bitty's development, and the second explored the story behind Itty Bitty, his “just a little guy” variant.
- 20 more Here Comes Bitcoin character stickers are in development, which should shortly be followed by another 20. As always, some will collaborate with bitcoin brands while others will continue being inspired by sci-fi, fantasy, or whatever is cool to us then. Sometimes, we worry that when banks and other corporate entities begin building strategic Bitcoin reserves, bitcoin will lose some of the weirdness that has served it so well since its invention. So, we’re doing our part to keep it weird.
- We shipped a big box of plushies to Japan, the country where Bitty and Itty Bitty have gotten perhaps the most love, for the Tokyo Bitcoin Base’s grand opening at the end of April.
Buncha Nerds
No matter how many sports they play or Patagonia vests they wear, at its core, our team is a bunch of nerds. While our creative team’s obsession with Warhammer 40K grows alongside their Pusheen collections, the rest of our nerds have been diving into the sorts of technical bitcoin topics that define a different but equally obsessive kind of nerddom.
- Spiral’s Bitcoin Wizards, @theinstagibbs and not_nothingmuch, posted two articles about bitcoin UTXO sharing and Wallet Clustering Basics.
- Yuval spoke about Wallet Clustering on the Bitcoin Developer’s Channel.
- Conor added to our growing comms presence by writing a solid feature piece about Payjoin Dev Kit. Payjoin improves blockspace efficiency and preserves privacy without requiring protocol changes. To find out more or just to see how of a nerd you really are, just read the dang article or listen to Steve yap about it on PBJ.
- The Lightning Development Kit released a new feature, VSS, and G8XSU wrote all about it.
- Speaking of newsletters, everyone’s favorite impassioned Twitter poster and bitcoin developer, Matt Corallo, got a newsletter all to himself. In it, he’ll be getting mad once a month about a different topic in bitcoin’s orbit. This month’s angry newsletter was about custodial solutions.