BS

ben schroth

contact me via email or view my github & twitter

founding engineer @ lygos finance (2025-pres)

opensats grant recipient building dlcdevkit

founder @ bitcoin bay a 501c3 non-profit focused on education & adoption in tampa, fl (2021-pres)

prev engineer @ blockspaces building institutional lightning financial contracts (2022-2024)

Current Focus

  • founding engineer @ lygos finance — my day job
  • dlcdevkit & the ernest dlc ecosystem (opensats)
  • bitcoin bay + tampa bitdevs
  • playing with ai — always-on agents, personal knowledge wiki, content generation (hermes is my personal setup: assistant, work, trainer)

My Work

web

  • lightning connect: enterprise lightning solution for businesses to transact over lightning and connect to their existing business infrastructure.
  • bay wallet: a non-custodial lightning node running on the phone with a nostr client. built with ldk. Bitcoin Bay engineering collaborative project. a part of tampa bitdevs.
  • nostr-react-native: react native hooks for nostr (thanks react-native builds.)
  • bitcoin bay website the best city in the usa. (everyone stop moving here tho)
  • bay wallet (old): a lightning wallet built for the residents of tampa bay, powered by lnbits
  • bitcoin bay nostr relay: i maintain a nostr relay for bitcoin bay (wss://nostr.bitcoinbay.engineering)
  • open-meetup: open-source website template for bitcoin meetup nonprofits. powers bitcoinbay.foundation.
  • hexynip5: a cli tool to quickly convert npub's to hex format
  • bitcoinbay.club nip05: nip05 verified accounts for bitcoin bay. join the club!
  • ~/creatv: a social media app built on lightning, powered by rn-ldk
  • cold brew: a social media application powered by hive
  • auntie lnd: winner of the satsby 2023 hackathon by pleb lab

rust

  • dlcdevkit (ddk): a rust toolkit for building bitcoin dlc applications. opensats grant project.
  • ernest-oracle: a dlc oracle server for attesting to real-world events.
  • sons of liberty: rust backend for dlc-based financial contracts, built on loco.
  • taproot-dlc: research implementation of dlcs using bitcoin's taproot upgrade (schnorr + script-path spending).
  • ddk-node: a ready-to-go dlc node built on ddk with cli & lightning transport. on crates.io.
  • ddk-ffi: language bindings for dlcdevkit. used by my work at lygos.
  • squawkbox: dlc communication over nostr.
  • city tavern: proxy dlc communication for clients that aren't internet facing.
  • dlcat: dlcs implemented with different bitcoin covenant proposals.
  • dlc-events: cli for generating dummy nostr events for dlc oracles.
  • bitender: an automated lightning beer tap. see it in action!
  • arc: automated collateral management of derivatives contracts using lightning
  • benln: a ready-to-go ln node implementation with a gRPC server & CLI for spiral's ldk-node
  • benlnurl: a non-custodial lnurl server that offers lnurl addresses for multiple users w/ multiple nodes connected.
  • lnurl-cli: cli toolkit for various lnurl functions
  • mempool websocket: subscribe to mempool.space websocket and use a callback function when new blocks arrive
  • btc-tx-search: a rust cli to query bitcoin transactions and addresses
  • lnd-test-util: Utility to run a regtest lnd process connected to a given bitcoind instance, useful in integration testing environment.
  • buzz buddy: bitcoin enabled toy (nsfw)

ai

  • afk: a cli that runs claude in a loop to plan, build, test, and commit autonomously. my ralph loop.
  • bitcoin-bay-skill & bitcoinbay/skills: claude skills for agents to manage the bitcoin bay websites and open-meetup.
  • ask steve: llm trained on creator's content, podcasts, posts, etc. to engage their community. fans can engage creators by asking the llm questions about the creator.

Contributions

  • mutiny wallet: non-custodial ldk based lightning wallet
  • note-duel: mutiny's dlc client for nostr-based duels
  • tonic_lnd: gRPC library for LND in Rust
  • rust-dlc: rust library for working with DLCs. top external contributor — 20+ merged PRs including the bitcoin 0.32 & lightning 0.0.125 upgrades, oracle attestation validation, and bitcoin::Amount migration.
  • kormir: rust DLC oracle
  • react-native-ldk: ldk library used by bay wallet
  • mempool.js: javascript library for interacting with mempool.space
  • daisy: a nostr client for android and ios
  • bitcoin beach: grass roots wallet in el zonte, el salvador

Publications & Talks

ben schroth