Navigating the Bitcoin Open-Source World
It’s hard to believe it’s been a year and a half since I plunged into the world of open-source bitcoin.
Previously, I was a total bitcoin newbie and Executive Assistant at a variety of companies including Block for a few years before moving internally to Spiral, an open-source bitcoin initiative. I was honestly shocked when Steve Lee offered me a job as a Program Manager. I originally reached out to him on a whim and never thought our conversation would go anywhere. Thankfully, the stars aligned and the team needed help with some projects that matched my skill set. I didn’t know much about bitcoin, but I was up for the challenge.
It was a challenge, indeed. The learning curve was steep, but so was my excitement. While I was intimidated by the technical, tenured bitcoiners on my team, I worked hard to immerse myself in all things bitcoin. I took a methodical learning approach and read countless books and articles, watched YouTube videos, followed influential people and projects on Twitter, joined community forums, formulated research questions, and talked through points I didn’t understand with others in the space.
Now that I’m more settled, I’m excited to share my perspective of what it’s like to work in the bitcoin open-source space and how that differs from the traditional corporate environment.
Defining bitcoin open-source and Spiral
Essentially, the term “open-source” refers to software that is collaboratively produced and published transparently. All your favorite applications are built by developers that use a variety of open-source code. Many open-source projects start as developer-side hobbies. However, it takes time to fix bugs and update features, so as a project gains traction, developers will seek out funding to devote more resources to maintaining the software.
Bitcoin is free, open-source software (FOSS); the code is public, no single entity controls it, and changes are driven by the community. The word “free” does not refer to the price, it means the code can be used “freely”. The actual software that runs bitcoin, Bitcoin Core, is only one part of the ecosystem. Just as other forms of money rely on transaction rails such as credit cards and financial apps, there are many initiatives building ways to save and send bitcoin.
Spiral supports the bitcoin FOSS ecosystem. While our team is connected to a mothership, Block, we have full control of our budget and structure. We feel that the best use of our time and money is to both fund bitcoin FOSS developers and designers, and dedicate the majority of our engineering resources to a single FOSS project, the Lightning Development Kit (LDK).
Life at Spiral
Everyone on the team rolls up to Steve Lee, who reports to Jack Dorsey. The team is remote and spread across various time zones. We work asynchronously as much as possible and constantly communicate across messaging apps, documents, and GitHub. We have a monthly team meeting, a quarterly 1:1 with Steve, and aim to get together in person 3 to 4 times a year.
Steve expects each of us to define our responsibilities. At the end of the quarter, we provide an assessment of our work and goals for the following quarter. Steve ensures our plans are aligned with his vision and Spiral’s mission, but it falls on us to “be our own boss” and get things done.
I love having deep-focused time and flexible work hours, but I don’t think everyone would enjoy this type of work environment. Freedom is amazing, but it also comes with drawbacks.
How to be successful with open-source work
You need to be extremely driven and independent. While everyone dislikes pointless meetings, the lack of face-to-face interaction can be isolating at times, especially if you work from home. It’s great to have a flexible schedule, but it can be harder to manage your workload efficiently.
You need to be proactive and focused. There are endless ways to contribute to bitcoin, so it’s important to evaluate how you’re uniquely adding value when defining your scope of work. It’s not worth building something that is too similar to something that already exists and works well. There’s a lot that needs to be done and it’s critical to think broadly when prioritizing goals.
You need to be a strong written communicator and okay with direct correspondence. People are more forward with their asks, not in a rude way, but with less fluff. It’s great to quickly get to the point and receive clear instructions, but when the corporate communication style is ingrained in the way you operate, it’s an adjustment to speak and be spoken to differently.
You need to be open to reaching out to strangers and working in public. There are people all over the world who work on bitcoin and many use pseudonyms or don’t speak the same first language. It’s important to be friendly and flexible with communication channels. Putting your work on public platforms is intimidating, but it’s critical to keeping development transparent.
My transition to open-source from corporate
While being an Executive Assistant required impeccable time management, interpersonal skills, confidence, flexibility, and proactiveness, it wasn’t as necessary to think and operate “outside of the box”. When you’re at a company, most of the people you interact with also work for that organization or a similar establishment. It’s less intimidating to reach out to strangers when you can use Slack or LinkedIn. In the open-source world you need to get creative, which means DMing people on Twitter, acquiring Signal numbers, and joining Telegram or Discord groups.
Additionally, as an Executive Assistant, I had a support team and dedicated business partners. Project collaboration was built into everyone’s scope of work and there was an underlying expectation to chat with someone if they added a meeting to your calendar. People operate more casually in the open-source community, as there is no hierarchy or formal guidelines. It can be difficult to get tasks done when you don’t have as much help and it’s less clear when you should collaborate or delegate.
Of course, it was an adjustment to work in open-source bitcoin, but I love it. I really believe that bitcoin is the most open form of money ever made and gives many people a better way to store and send value. The development is still in the early days and it’s exciting to be part of the progression.
Conclusion
Ultimately, there are pros and cons to both the open-source world and structured work environments. If the open-source culture doesn’t sound like a good fit for you, that’s okay! There are other ways to get involved in the community and help bitcoin adoption. You can attend events, contribute to open-source projects in your free time, and connect with people on social platforms.
The community is seriously amazing. I’ve met so many interesting, talented, and unique individuals from all over the world. There is a strong sense of alliance even as people work on different ideas because at the end of the day everyone is on Team Bitcoin. I hope to see you join the team or meet you if I haven’t already!
