About the Fellowship

What is it?

The Bitshala Fellowship is where your Bitcoin career actually begins. Whether you're a developer, designer, or an educator - this is a unique opportunity for you to work on real Bitcoin open-source projects, under real mentors, within real outcomes. No bounties. No fluff. Just purely focused, collaborative, high-impact work that will help you become a serious contributor to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Fellows can contribute part-time or full-time to projects that make an impact - with support, guidance, and a vibrant community behind them. You'll learn by doing, build under mentorship, and gradually become a peer to the very people building Bitcoin's future.

Who is it for?

This is for you if:

You're a developer, designer, or educator who already understands the basics of Bitcoin
You've dabbled with open-source or self-driven work — and want to take the next serious step
You're motivated to contribute to Bitcoin because you care about it, not because it's "buzzing"
You're looking to work under mentorship, build credibility, and grow into a full-time FOSS career
You're based in India (or South-East Asia), and want to be part of a growing ecosystem with aligned people

Fellows we've worked with have gone on to lead educational clubs, join full-time FOSS projects, or even become core members of the Bitshala team.

What does a fellow actually do?

You'll either:

Join an existing project — and get matched with a mentor based on your skillset
Or propose your own initiative — and we'll help you shape it into something real

Your week-to-week work will involve:

Regular calls with your mentor or team
Monthly log submissions & reviews
Contributing design, code, or content depending on your track
Collaborating in the open, through GitHub, Figma, or other public workflows

The fellowships are typically 6 months long, with the possibility to extend to 12 months based on performance.

Each fellow receives a $500/month stipend to support their work.

Explore Dev Projects

Here are open-source projects ready for your innovation and expertise. Each project offers a unique opportunity to contribute to the Bitcoin community's growth and development.

Silent-Payment Library

A Typescript wallet library implementing all the silent-payment primitives.

Language:

Typescript

Silent Payment Indexer

A Typescript project to build various mechanisms of fetching the SP indexes.

Language:

Typescript

Coinseletion

A rust library bringing the Bitcoin Core's coinselection algorithms to the wallet development world.A crucial missing piece of Bitcoin wallet infrastructure.

Language:

Rust

Coinswap

Functioning, minimal-viable binaries and libraries to perform a trustless, p2p Maxwell-Belcher Coinswap Protocol

Language:

Rust

Bitcoin Core

The reference implementation of the bitcoin protocol

Language:

C++

Lightning Development Kit

A complete lightning implementation packaged as an SDK

Language:

Rust

Lightning Network Daemon

A Golang implementation and the most widely run full node on the lightning network

Language:

Go

Core Lightning

A lightweight, highly customizable and standard compliant implementation of the lightning protocol written in C

Language:

C

Eclair

A scala implementation of the lightning network, focusing on the mobile use case

Language:

Scala

Bitcoin Development Kit

Seamlessly build cross platform wallets

Language:

Rust

Libsecp256k1

Optimized C library for elliptic curve operations on secp256k1

Language:

C

Validating Lightning Signer

Improve your lightning node security by protecting your keys separately

Language:

Rust

BTCPayserver

Free, open-source and self-hosted, bitcoin payment processor

Language:

C#

Fedimint

A modular protocol to custody and transact bitcoin in a community context

Language:

Rust

Stratum V2

The next generation protocol for pooled mining

Language:

Rust

Rust Bitcoin Library

A series of projects to implement various bitcoin protocols in Rust

Language:

Rust

Have a entirely different project you’d like to contribute to?

Tell us about the project you're interested in →

Explore Our Education Initiatives

Want to teach? Start a club? Build resources that make Bitcoin easier to learn? The Education Fellowship is for people who love simplifying complex ideas, and want to grow the Bitcoin learning movement in India..

You can propose your own initiative, or join an existing one. Below are the initiatives taken up by past Fellows. If you’ve ever thought, “more people should understand this” — well, this is your path to make it happen.

Latest in Bitcoin Tech

Weekly Bitcoin Optech deep-dives where bitcoin enthusiasts explore the latest developments and happenings in the Bitcoin tech world

Tell me more →

MB Study Club

General-purpose reading club to help build your non-tech Bitcoin knowledge. Here we dive deep into rabbit holes on philosophy, economics, and more

Tell me more →

Bitcoin PR Review Club

Bi-weekly reviews to get into the weeds of Bitcoin Core. Ideal for aspiring Core Devs to learn hands-on and sharpen their dev skills along the way

Tell me more →

Trad-Fi & Bitcoin

Bi-weekly reviews to get into the weeds of Bitcoin Core. Ideal for aspiring Core Devs to learn hands-on and sharpen their dev skills along the way

Tell me more →

Reading Club

General-purpose reading club to help build your non-tech Bitcoin knowledge. Here we dive deep into rabbit holes on philosophy, economics, and more

Tell me more →

Hands-On Lightning

Bi-weekly reviews to get into the weeds of Bitcoin Core. Ideal for aspiring Core Devs to learn hands-on and sharpen their dev skills along the way

Tell me more →

Got a new idea for an education initiative?

Tell us more about it in your fellowship application...

Apply for the Educator Fellowship →

Our Fellows

These are the people shaping the next chapter of Bitcoin. Some started as students. Some as indie devs. Some as curious believers. Now they’re core builders from India.

Developers