🌊 #016 Feel the Breez
Bitcoin's down, builders aren't.
January didn’t hang around. From announcing our </time2build> winners to putting value transfer in the hands of 300,000 Europeans, it was another jam-packed month.
Here’s what’s new in the world of Breez:
🏦 → 300,000 More Bitcoiners
🏆 → Introducing Our </time2build> Winners
🎓 → ELI5: Spark
🍹 → Lightning in the Wild: Portal
🎙️ → Breez Around the World
300,000 Europeans Bitcoiners 🏦
European neobank Deblock became the latest Breez SDK partner to go live, bringing instant, self-custodial bitcoin to over 300,000 users across Europe.
Self-custody isn’t a feature for Deblock. It’s the foundation of their product. By integrating bitcoin with the Breez SDK, their users can now:
Buy and sell bitcoin with euros, instantly
Send and receive bitcoin in seconds
Stay fully self-custodial
No more delays. No more expensive fees. Just euros in, bitcoin out. In seconds.
Bitcoin in every app. Let’s go.
Introducing Our </time2build> Winners 🏆
Back in October, we launched </time2build> with a simple idea: give developers the tools, and they’ll bring bitcoin to the apps people already use. Two months later, the results are in.
Builders from around the world delivered integrations across merchant tools, social platforms, game engines, forums, and more. Here are our winners:
$3,500 Prize Winners
BTCPay Server (Aljaz): A plugin that makes bitcoin super simple for merchants worldwide.
Evento (Brianna, Andre, Aaliyah): Value transfer built into a social events platform, proving value can move peer-to-peer in the moments that create it.
Portal (Alessandro, Gianluca, Gabriele, John): Lightning integrated into a universal identity and payments protocol, making value transfer a native capability for any app built on top.
Primal (Daniel): Self-custodial bitcoin brought to Primal’s web client, removing onboarding friction for Nostr users.
$1,000 Prize Winners
OBS Studio Donations Plugin, Backend for Nutshell Mints, SatsMobi, CDK Payment Processor, Godot Engine Breez Plugin, Umbraco Marketplace NuGet Package, Discourse Breez Tipping, and CTFd Bitcoin Rewards Plugin.
Special Prizes
Lib de Satoshi & B4OS (DraperU), Sparkihonne (PlebLab).
The era of building has begun. Check out the full announcement here.
Spark Explained Like You’re Five 🎓
Eight years ago (seriously, how?!), Roy wrote Understanding Lightning Network Using an Abacus to demystify how Lightning worked. Lately, he’s been noticing similar questions around Spark. So he’s taken the same approach again.
The result? Spark Explained Like You’re Five.
Published on Bitcoin Magazine, Roy uses a simple two-piece puzzle analogy to show how Spark works, from how ownership can change hands, to how trust is distributed across multiple operators.
If you want to learn how it all works under the hood, this is the place to start.
Lightning in the Wild: Portal 🍹
This month’s Lightning in the Wild takes us to Portal, one of our </time2build> winners.
The Portal team didn’t just add Lightning to their app. They built it into the protocol itself. Any application built on Portal now inherits the ability to move value globally, with Lightning as the common language.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Breez Around the World 🎙️
January saw the Breez team on stages, podcasts, and panels around the world.
First up: Roy was on stage in El Salvador at Plan ₿ where he broke down why value must move like information, why Bitcoin’s the only way to do this, and how AI means anyone can now add value transfer to any app. Simple.
Roy also joined Guy Swann to discuss how Bitcoin has completely transformed over the last three years. They dove into why Lightning is the common language, what value transfer is, and how Breez’s newest implementation, Spark, works.
Meanwhile, Danny joined Stephan Livera, alongside </time2build> winners Aljaz (BTCPay Server) and Brianna (Evento), to discuss the challenge, building with the Breez SDK, and why more developers are bringing bitcoin to everyday apps.
That’s all for this month, folks.
Remember: the best time to add value transfer is now. It always has been.
See y’all next time ✌️
Solid breakdown of the Deblock integration. The self-custody as foundation approach is exactly what mainstream Bitcoin adoption needs rather than just bolting it on as afeature. Been watching neobank integrations for a while and most compromise on custody way too easily. The SDK architecture here seems to solve the builder friction problem I've seen firsthand when devs try to add Lightning to existing apps.