gaps worth building in
The ideas exist. They're just scattered everywhere. We collected them so you can stop searching and start building.
Pay someone who doesn't have a wallet yet.
Bitcoin users want to send sats to friends, family, or gig workers who haven't set up a wallet yet. Today's claim link flows are custodial, regional, or wound down. Widen the geography, make it non-custodial, or ship the next version.
Bitcoin users want to send sats to friends, family, or gig workers who haven't set up a wallet yet. Hackathon builders have attempted this since 2013 (social-graph friend-loans, mobile proximity transfer, merchant-pushed loyalty rewards, LNURL claim pages) without a dominant solution. River Link generates a custodial claim link redeemable to any wallet (US-only). Mutiny Wallet offered gift links with a temp web wallet but wound down in 2024. Cash App dropped $Cashtag bitcoin transfers in December 2024. Widen the geography, make it non-custodial, or ship the next version.
Skip remittance fees when sending money across borders.
Remittance fees hit 4-8% on mobile-money corridors. Bitcoin rails can route around them, but the map is a patchwork. Pick an underserved corridor or turn a receive-side rail into a sender product.
Remittance is a daily lifeline; the cost varies wildly by corridor. Wise drove USD and EUR sub-1%, but mobile-money corridors (M-Pesa, Pix, MTN MoMo) run 4-8%. Bitcoin and Lightning can route around the bank rails. Strike sends US outbound; Bitnob covers African receive; Tando lands Lightning on M-Pesa; Machankura brings Lightning to USSD phones. The map is a patchwork. Pick an underserved corridor (EU to Africa, Gulf to South Asia), widen an existing service, or turn a receive-side rail into a complete sender product.
Make bitcoin work when the internet isn't.
Bitcoin assumes internet. Where a regime cuts the connection or bandwidth is patchy, payments stop. Ship the wallet-level primitive for offline transfer that other wallets can plug into.
Lightning assumes internet. So does most of bitcoin's payment flow. Where a regime cuts the connection, or connectivity is patchy, payments stop. Bitcoin has 14 years of attempts at this: Bluetooth offline transactions in the Android wallet back in 2012, then SMS bridges, then mesh-network experiments. But no shipped wallet-level primitive any other wallet can plug into. Bitchat (Jack Dorsey's offline mesh messaging) shows how big the design space is.
Pay or accept Lightning on a webpage without installing anything.
Visitors land on pages that ask for sats and bounce because connecting a wallet means installing an extension or copying connection strings. The primitives exist piece by piece. Pick the slice the ecosystem leaves open and ship the next layer.
Visitors land on pages that ask for sats and bounce because connecting a wallet means installing an extension or copying connection strings. Bitcoin Connect ships the visitor-side connection for any NWC wallet, BTCPay Server handles the merchant accept side, and Lightning Address turns username@domain into a paste-anywhere identifier. Pick the slice the ecosystem leaves open and ship the next layer of Lightning's web story.
Build something in bitcoin that Gen Z would actually use.
Nothing in bitcoin is built for how Gen Z uses the internet. The interfaces, the language, the onboarding. What if you had to earn their attention first?
Nothing in bitcoin is built for how Gen Z uses the internet. The interfaces, the language, the onboarding. What if you had to earn their attention first? For inspiration, check skibidi.cash.
Use instant permissionless value transfer to unlock new product categories or improve existing ones.
Most apps that could use bitcoin don't know it yet. What new product experiences can you build that use instant permissionless value transfer as an enabler, not the main feature?
Most apps that could use bitcoin don't know it yet. What new product experiences can you build that use instant permissionless value transfer as an enabler, not the main feature?
Swap cash and bitcoin at a kiosk that's cheap, private, and self-custodial.
Bitcoin ATMs charge 7-25% and require Know Your Customer identity checks. That leaves cash-preferring buyers without a cheap, private, self-custodial option. Shave the fee, drop the identity-check floor, or launch in an underserved geography.
Public bitcoin ATMs let anyone (first-time buyers, privacy-conscious holders, cash-preferring travelers) swap between cash and bitcoin at 7-25% fees, with Know Your Customer (KYC) the norm. The landscape is country-bound: Bitcoin Depot, CoinFlip, LibertyX (US); Bitcoin Well (Canada); Athena (LatAm); SatoshiPoint (UK). Byte Federal pairs a self-custody wallet. None ship a sub-percent, non-KYC-for-small-buys, layer-2-first (Lightning, Liquid, Cashu, or Fedimint), self-custody-by-default, meetup-scale kiosk. LightningATM is the DIY precedent. Launch in an underserved geography, shave the fee, drop the KYC floor, or package the hardware.
Make advanced custody usable without being a cryptographer.
Advanced bitcoin custody uses multisig and timelocks to survive key loss. Today that means descriptor-fluent DIY tools, recurring white-glove subscriptions, or bundled hardware where a third party holds one of the keys. Build the version that's as easy as password managers, self-serve on recovery, and works with hardware people already own.
Advanced custody uses multisig and miniscript timelocks to survive key loss while supporting inheritance. A DIY tier ships free (Sparrow, Specter, Liana, Nunchuk, Theya) for users comfortable with descriptors and PSBTs. A white-glove tier charges recurring fees for expert setup and recovery (Casa, Unchained, Anchorwatch, Onramp). Bitkey bundles 3-key multisig into hardware with no subscription, but only with its own hardware and with Block holding a key. Build the version that's password-manager-easy, self-serve on recovery, and works with hardware wallets people already own.
Ship bitcoin privacy tooling that a non-technical user can actually use.
Privacy-conscious bitcoin holders want CoinJoin mixes, coin control, and transaction-graph breaks without opening a terminal. Today's tools are desktop-first or need a local node, and the coordinator layer thinned after 2024 enforcement. Make privacy mobile-first, ship an easy onboarding coordinator, or integrate privacy into the wallets people already use.
Privacy-conscious bitcoin holders want CoinJoin mixes, coin control, and transaction-graph breaks without opening a terminal. Wasabi runs WabiSabi CoinJoin rounds via GUI. Sparrow ships coin control and PayJoin via desktop GUI. JoinMarket-Qt needs a local Bitcoin Core node and manual configuration. Samourai Whirlpool shut down after a DOJ indictment in 2024; Wasabi's coordinator dissolved the same year, thinning the CoinJoin coordinator layer. Make privacy mobile-first, ship an easy-onboarding CoinJoin coordinator, or integrate privacy into the wallets people already use.
Tell people what it actually costs them to spend their bitcoin today.
Most bitcoin holders have coins in multiple wallets with different cost bases. The tax simulation exists but is buried inside year-end tax software built for traders. Build the forward-looking spending tool: connect your wallets, see your basis, know before you tap.
Most holders have coins in multiple wallets with different cost bases and no idea what the tax hit looks like if they spend right now. CoinTracking and Koinly let you simulate a sale, but both are buried features in year-end tax software built for traders. Nobody's built the forward-looking version for everyday spending: connect your wallets, see your basis, know before you tap.
Build a bookkeeping program for bitcoin that keeps your data local.
A bitcoin business needs double-entry accounting, satoshi precision, and invoicing in one tool. Today's options are partly open-source, closed hosted SaaS, or can't handle satoshi precision at all. Ship the fully open-source local-first accounting stack with invoicing built in.
Clams is the closest thing: double-entry accounting with on-chain and Lightning support, fiat multi-currency, and cost basis tracking as of V1 Beta. But it's not fully open source and has no invoicing. BTCPay stops at the accounting boundary. Zaprite has the best invoicing UX but it's closed-source SaaS. GnuCash can't handle satoshi precision.
Give bitcoin node operators policy control over their own mempool.
Every bitcoin node operator has the right to choose which transactions their node relays. Exercising that right today means running a fork. Ship a plugin system, design policy profiles, and explain the consequences of these decisions.
Every bitcoin node operator has the right to decide which valid transactions their node accepts and relays. That's policy, not consensus: the transactions stay valid on the network either way; the node just chooses what to propagate. bitcoin.conf exposes some policy: relay fees, a handful of standardness knobs like permitbaremultisig. But the policies operators actually argue over today, like filtering inscription-shaped witnesses or rejecting specific script patterns, aren't on that config surface. Bitcoin Knots and Peter Todd's Libre Relay exist as forks because new policy logic has to be patched into the codebase, not toggled in a config file. A Pluggable Filter Framework proposal surfaced on Delving Bitcoin in October 2025 but is still discussion-stage. Pick up the proposal, ship a plugin system, design policy profiles that don't require running a fork, and explain the consequences of each policy choice.
Automate opening, closing, rebalancing, and fee-setting for Lightning channels.
Lightning node operators make four decisions at once: which peers to open channels with, when to rebalance, what fees to charge, and when to close. Core Lightning has a daemon that stitches them together. LND (Lightning Network Daemon) doesn't. Port the pattern, or ship the LND-native autopilot.
Lightning node operators make four liquidity decisions at once: which peers to open channels with, when to rebalance, what fees to charge, and when to close. Balance of Satoshis and Thunderhub provide the levers manually on LND. charge-lnd sets fees by policy; Loop does on-chain swaps, Peerswap does peer-to-peer swaps. LNDg automates fees and rebalancing with a web UI but doesn't open or close channels. On CLN, clboss already stitches open, rebalance, and fees together. Port the pattern to LND, build an LND-native autopilot, or orchestrate the existing LND tools into one integrated daemon.
Prove bitcoin reserves without revealing UTXOs, ledgers, or per-customer balances.
Bitcoin custodians must prove adequate reserves without revealing UTXOs, ledgers, or per-customer balances. Today's Merkle and zero-knowledge proofs rely on custodian infrastructure or auditor trust. Ship continuous proofs, customer-verifiable inclusion without audit trust, or make the proof on chain-verifiable.
Bitcoin custodians must prove they hold adequate bitcoin reserves without revealing UTXOs, ledgers, or per-customer balances. Kraken publishes Merkle-tree inclusion proofs with liability verification via an independent accountancy; Binance ships Merkle-tree proofs but omits liabilities. OKX uses zero-knowledge proofs to hide UTXOs and amounts while showing assets exceed liabilities; Backpack publishes daily zero-knowledge proofs anyone can verify. All rely on custodian-controlled infrastructure or auditor trust. Ship continuous proofs, customer-verifiable inclusion without audit trust, or make the proof on-chain-verifiable.
See what's actually happening on the bitcoin network.
Analysts and node operators want real-time visibility into mempool, forks, fee dynamics, propagation, and double-spend conflicts. Each surface has a specialist tool. No unified observatory covers them together. Build it, cover an uncovered layer, or ship an open cross-tool feed.
Analysts, researchers, and node operators want real-time visibility into bitcoin network activity across mempool, forks, fee dynamics, propagation, and double-spend conflicts. Each surface has a specialist tool: mempool.space for mempool and fees, forkmonitor.info for consensus anomalies, Bitnodes for node census. No unified observatory covers them together, and new layers keep appearing. Ship the unified bitcoin network observatory, cover an uncovered layer, or build the open cross-tool feed anyone can subscribe to.
Show people what their bitcoin node is actually doing.
Bitcoin Core proposed a showcase design for visualizing node activity. Nobody has built it as a real desktop app yet. The design exists. The implementation doesn't.
Bitcoin Core proposed a showcase design for visualizing node activity. Nobody has built it as a real desktop app yet. The design exists. The implementation doesn't.
Give newcomers an end-to-end bitcoin learning flow from first click to confident self-custody.
Bitcoin newcomers learn by piecing tools together. Each option covers a meaningful slice. None is designed to hand off to the next. Build the cohesive, hands-on learning arc from beginner to mastery.
Bitcoin newcomers learn by piecing tools together: Anders Brownworth for concepts, Learn Me A Bitcoin for mechanics, Mi Primer Bitcoin in 25+ languages, Plan B Network, Saylor Academy, and BTC Sessions for video walkthroughs. Each covers a meaningful slice. None is designed to hand off to the next. Mobile-native interactive is thin, and non-English-first options outside Spanish and Portuguese are limited. Build the cohesive, hands-on learning arc from beginner to mastery.
Explain bitcoin's quantum risk so anyone can get it.
The topic is complex and most explanations are either too technical or too high level. There's room for something interactive, visual, and honest about the cryptography and potential futures.
The topic is complex and most explanations are either too technical or too high level. There's room for something interactive, visual, and honest about the cryptography and potential futures.
Collect the good things real people say about bitcoin.
It's time to collect positive, real testimonials from actual bitcoin users. Not influencers, not maxis. Just regular people saying what it did for them, presented in a compelling way.
It's time to collect positive, real testimonials from actual bitcoin users. Not influencers, not maxis. Just regular people saying what it did for them, presented in a compelling way.
Auto-pay contributors for a specific unit of work.
Maintainers want to pay open-source contributors in sats when their work ships. Today's tools auto-pay in fiat, distribute across dependency trees, or keep the on-merge flow private. Port the mechanics to bitcoin, open-source the pattern, or ship a GitHub Action that pays sats on merge.
Maintainers want to pay open-source contributors in sats when their work ships, but no end-to-end tool does this today. Hackathon builders have attempted this across four angles (AI training payments, PR-merge bounties, L402 workforce payments, activist bounties) without a dominant solution. Algora auto-pays on PR merge via Stripe, fiat-only. thanks.dev distributes periodically across dependency trees, not per unit of work. PlanB Network runs a Lightning-on-merge flow internally but hasn't open-sourced it. Port Algora's mechanics to bitcoin, open-source a pattern similar to PlanB, or ship a GitHub Action that pays sats on merge.
Build a game where bitcoin is the payment rail.
Game designers and players wanting real economic stakes have a narrow set of bitcoin options. Each shipped product reaches a narrow audience. Build the bitcoin-native game at scale, deepen player-to-player markets, or make the rail easy for indie studios without platform custody.
Game designers and players wanting real economic stakes have a narrow set of options. THNDR Games runs mobile skill-games like Tetro Tiles, Bitcoin Bounce, and Clinch where top scorers split a prize pot paid in sats. ZBD ships developer tools that embed Lightning payments and rewards into web and mobile titles. Sovereigncraft pipes real sats through a Minecraft server with player-driven nations and economies. Each reaches a narrow audience. Build the bitcoin-native game at scale, deepen player-to-player markets, or make the rail easy for indie studios without platform custody.
Settle a real-world bet or condition on-chain without a house.
Friends settle bets on sports, elections, and weather every day. In bitcoin that means trusting a sportsbook with custody or rolling your own Discreet Log Contract setup. The bitcoin rails exist. Ship the consumer product.
Friends settle bets on sports, elections, and weather every day. In bitcoin, that means trusting a sportsbook with custody or building your own DLC setup. Thunderpick and its peers take custody. Polymarket proved non-custodial prediction markets work at scale, but on Polygon with USDC, not bitcoin. DLC Markets and Lava ship Discreet Log Contracts for institutional derivatives and loans. dlcdevkit is the dev toolkit. Atomic Finance shipped a consumer DLC app and sunset it in late 2025. Son of Liberty wraps dlcdevkit into a friend-bet flow for Umbrel and Start9 nodes. The bitcoin rails exist. The consumer product doesn't.
Monetize per-use content or services via bitcoin micropayments.
Creators want to charge for one article or song without asking readers to commit to a monthly subscription. Tipping flows exist but don't gate content. Build the per-use paywall creators and AI services can drop in with no payment backend to run.
Most creator monetization comes through subscriptions. Patreon, Substack, and YouTube Premium ask readers to commit to a monthly fee, even if they only want one article or song. Nostr zaps let readers tip a creator per post, but tipping isn't a paywall: the reader gets the content for free either way. A creator (or AI service) who wants to actually charge for one specific piece, with no monthly commitment from the reader and no payment backend to run, has no good option.
Build the small merchant bitcoin acceptance into a simplified experience.
Most bitcoin wallets give merchants a receive screen. A real point of sale has preset items, a keypad, payment history, and clean accounting export. Today's options are self-hosted server setups, custodial mobile apps, or scattered features. Ship the open self-hostable cohesive mobile POS.
Most bitcoin wallets give merchants a receive screen. That's not a POS. A POS has preset items, a keypad, notes, payment history, and a way to export it all. BTCPay Server has this but requires hosting your own server. Wallet of Satoshi and Breez have it as mobile apps, but neither tracks payment rails or exports clean accounting data. Square shipped Lightning acceptance to its merchant base in 2025 (custodial-via-Square). Coinsnap ships a self-custodial mobile POS. The open self-hostable cohesive stack (preset items, keypad, price display in customer currency, clean accounting export, no server keys) doesn't exist.
Run a peer-to-peer bitcoin marketplace without a centralized merchant account.
A bitcoin marketplace needs listings, reputation, escrow, and decentralized hosting. Past attempts went centralized and got shut down, or ran out of funding. The primitives exist today as separate pieces. Assemble them into the marketplace nobody can shut down.
Silk Road (2011-2013) ran the first bitcoin marketplace at scale, with thousands of sellers, search, reviews, and escrow. It was centralized, and the FBI shut it down. OpenBazaar tried to port that shape without a central operator and ran out of funding in 2021. Plebeian Market ships a self-hostable Nostr marketplace with Lightning checkout, but no escrow or reputation layer. Scrow provides non-custodial multisig escrow on Nostr as a primitive. The pieces exist. The marketplace that assembles them doesn't.
Monetize unsolicited contact to invert the spam economy.
Senders blast DMs and emails for free while recipients eat the noise. Earn.com proved sender-pays-recipient works at scale, then got acquired and shut down. The rails exist across Lightning and Nostr. Build the cross-channel consumer gate.
Earn.com validated sender-pays-recipient at scale in 2015-2019 (hundreds of thousands of users, millions in revenue) before Coinbase acquired and shut it down. Nothing has filled the gap since. LinkedIn InMail charges senders but keeps the fee; recipients get nothing. Tanstaafl ships Lightning-gated email today, but senders need a Lightning wallet. Nostr's NIP-57 Zaps give clients the payment rail; no major client ships a pay-to-DM toggle. The rails exist. The cross-channel consumer gate doesn't.
Swap bitcoin for another cryptocurrency peer-to-peer without a centralized exchange.
Bitcoin holders swapping sats for altcoins or stablecoins choose between centralized exchanges and imperfect decentralized options. The primitives work pair by pair. Build the peer-to-peer layer that covers arbitrary pairs.
Bitcoin holders swapping sats for altcoins or stablecoins choose between centralized exchanges and imperfect decentralized options. THORChain and Maya route through shared liquidity pools: non-custodial but not P2P, and governance can freeze funds. Bisq matches counterparties directly via multisig escrow, not atomic. Eigenwallet is a P2P atomic swap for BTC ↔ XMR only; scriptless-script doesn't generalize to other altcoins. The primitives work pair-by-pair. The P2P layer across arbitrary pairs doesn't exist.
Build a way to experiment with bitcoin/L2 code or networks without touching mainnet.
Builders working on a new bitcoin or L2 protocol roll their own environment or wait for testnet. Lightning has a one-click regtest GUI. Cashu, Fedimint, Ark, and statechains don't. Ship the GUI for the layer the ecosystem hasn't covered.
Polar gives Lightning developers a one-click regtest network. It covers Lightning's basic flows but not newer features like BOLT-12 or splicing. For Cashu, Fedimint, Ark, and statechains there are docker scripts and shell demos but no Polar-class GUI equivalent. At the L1 layer, BitScript helped with script execution but is wound down. Warnet handles network-scale experimentation for Bitcoin Core research. Most builders working on a new bitcoin/L2 protocol roll their own environment or wait for testnet. The shape exists. The GUI coverage doesn't.
Build the wallet-library support for bitcoin operations, primitives, and features that isn't there yet.
Most wallets build on one of three bitcoin dev kits. Each kit has the operations it was built around. Operations these libraries don't yet expose need filling in. Pick an unexposed primitive and ship it as a library addition.
Most wallets build on BDK, LDK, or BitcoinJ. Each library has the operations it was built around: multisig construction and background autosave in BitcoinJ, channel management in LDK, descriptor wallets in BDK. The operations these libraries don't yet expose need filling in. A wallet that wants to ship one either writes from spec or drops the operation.
Build the UI component library bitcoin doesn't have yet.
Every bitcoin app starts the same way: building a balance display, an address formatter, a block clock from scratch. Bitcoin's closest component library covers a narrow slice, with no community directory. Build the next layer or extend what's there.
Every new bitcoin app starts the same way: building a balance display, an address formatter, a block clock. From scratch. ShadCN solved this for web UI with a community directory. Bitcoin UI Kit is the closest precedent (React components for PasswordInput, CurrencyInput, QRCode, and similar primitives), but coverage is narrow and there's no community directory. Build the next layer or extend what's there.
Add impactful bitcoin features to the wallets people already use.
Reference implementations for bitcoin features ship faster than wallets adopt them. The bottleneck is language bindings: Java for one wallet, Swift for another, Python for a third. Pick a feature, pick a wallet's language, and ship the binding.
Reference implementations ship faster than wallet adoption. Payjoin is the canonical example: Payjoin Dev Kit exists, and Bull Bitcoin and Cake Wallet have shipped v2 integrations, but that's two wallets. The work is mostly language bindings: Java for Sparrow, Swift for FullyNoded, C++ for Bitcoin Core and Nunchuk, Python for Electrum, Dart for Aqua. Same shape applies to other features waiting for bindings.
Make DIY bitcoin hardware accessible to hobbyists.
Hobbyists want to build their own bitcoin hardware at home across signing, mining, and full-node boxes. Each project has its own docs, parts list, and community. Getting from zero to a full home stack still means stitching across them. Curate the hobbyist on-ramp, package kits that skip the soldering, or build the canonical home-stack guide.
Hobbyists want to build their own bitcoin hardware at home, across signing, mining, and full-node boxes. SeedSigner turns a Raspberry Pi Zero and basic parts into an air-gapped signer for under $50. Krux flashes cheap development boards into touchscreen signers. Bitaxe ships open-source designs for home solo-lottery miners. RaspiBlitz packages a Pi into a configurable Lightning node. Each has its own docs, parts list, and assembly path. Getting from zero to a signer + node + miner under one roof still means stitching across separate communities. Curate the hobbyist on-ramp, package kits that skip the soldering, or build the canonical "your home stack" guide.
Give an AI agent a bitcoin wallet.
Giving an AI agent a bitcoin wallet means handing over keys and trusting it to transact on your behalf. The shipped category is busy and custodial-by-default. Build the layer the ecosystem hasn't shipped: budget caps users understand, recoverable agent keys, multi-agent treasury, or self-custody alternatives.
Giving an AI agent a bitcoin wallet means handing over keys (or scoped credentials) and trusting it to transact on your behalf. The shipped category is busy: Lightning Labs ships AI-agent skills with scoped macaroons and L402-gated APIs; Xverse ships an Agentic Wallet plus MCP server with budget controls; Coinbase and Trust Wallet cover custodial agentic wallets; Alby ships an MCP server for Lightning. The thin layer that's open: budget caps users actually understand, recoverable agent keys, multi-agent treasury, and self-custodial alternatives to the custodial-by-default pattern.
Build a game where AI agents compete with real money.
Not a crypto game. A classic game with a real bitcoin economy, played entirely by AI agents, watched by humans. Think board games with actual stakes.
Not a crypto game. A classic game with a real bitcoin economy, played entirely by AI agents, watched by humans. Think board games with actual stakes.
Give aspiring bitcoin developers an end-to-end learning path from first code to fluent builder.
Aspiring bitcoin developers stitch together their learning across browser puzzles, reference explainers, script IDEs, Lightning testbeds, and cohort programs. Each option covers a meaningful slice. The sequencing across them is on the learner. Build the cohesive, hands-on dev path from first script to fluent builder.
Aspiring bitcoin developers stitch together their learning: Saving Satoshi for browser coding puzzles, Decoding Bitcoin for bitcoin internals, Learn Me A Bitcoin for deep reference explainers, BitAuth IDE and Script Wiz for script debugging, Mutinynet for Lightning experimentation, Chaincode Labs and Base58 for deep cohorts. Each covers a meaningful slice. The sequencing across them is on the learner. Build the cohesive, hands-on dev path from first script to fluent builder and contributor.