Anyone! Innovation was created by exploring creatively and this was exactly your place to do that. You could stretch your creative side or explore a design concept that you’d had.

We loved to involve anyone that wanted to take part, from designers and developers, PM’s and consultants, to total noobs. Everyone was welcome!

The Bitcoin Designathon took place online between May 4 to 18, 2025.

All communications, project setup, news, updates, schedules, mentorship, and everything else happened in the Bitcoin Design Discord, for anyone to hop in and say hi 👋 to other makers, start forming project teams, and discuss ideas. This website was updated as the event progressed.

Workshops and talks were streamed on the Bitcoin Design Youtube Channel, so you could join us live or catch up in your own time!

The first few days were dedicated to ensuring all makers were matched up with projects. You could also choose to work on your project alone, totally up to you! The remainder of the event was free and open for you to explore your project.

Next to that, there were live workshops you could join, such as an intro to Open Design and the Bitcoin UI Kit, research, as well as some technical topics. If you wanted to host a call or workshop, you could reach out in the #designathon Discord channel.

On the final day makers submitted their projects for review and had a chance to present them live to the community.

The first few days of the Designathon were dedicated to providing makers with some amazing workshops. We also provided guidance in terms of online tutorials and resources you could use to enjoy your design journey. We also put together a brief how-to document with tips for participation.

This provided some good tools and resources for you to start designing and most importantly having fun! Next to that, our Discord channel was always open for you to post your question and we gladly directed you to any additional help you needed.

Looking for a project to join? You could jump into our Discord and introduce yourself in our #designathon channel. You could let other makers know who you were, where you were from, what skills, resources, and time you could offer, plus what you were excited to design!

Teams organised amongst themselves. We suggested including a variety of backgrounds and skill sets, which typically created better results. Some participants could be more design focused, others more technical, or artists, it totally depended on what you were working on.

Individual tracks had their own criteria, defined by each respective sponsor. The best projects overall were evaluated on the following criteria:

• 🌈 Innovation
  The design should have been something new and interesting. This could have been a brand new concept, or a fresh take on something we already knew.

• ⚡ Bitcoin Integration
  The design should have made intelligent use of bitcoin (and/or surrounding technologies like lightning).

• 👀 Open design
  The design community was all about working and collaborating in public. Had the project been transparent throughout the design journey?

• ✅ Execution
  Designers should have focused on attention to detail. How well was the project executed? How strong was the design process?

• 🍒 UX/UI Design
  The design was user-centered, followed good design principles and was well-crafted.

• 🔥 Je ne sais quoi
  The design should have had an extra level of pizazz, personality, creativity, or coolness.

Please note that only project work done during the Designathon counted.

The bitcoin designation was open to anything your mind could imagine. If you had an idea in mind and were wondering if it would have been a great fit for the Designathon, you could ask in Discord. Below you’d find a list of idea categories which might have helped!

Also keep in mind that you didn't necessarily need a new idea, you could also help improve existing projects.

• Future tech - how would we use bitcoin a few years from now when lightning, ecash, nostr and other advancements were broadly adopted?

• Adoption - how could we as a community get the current tech to more people in new, interesting, and useful ways?

• Inclusion - explore how bitcoin could reach more people by improving aspects like accessibility and localization

• Finance - how could bitcoin be used in finance beyond payments and savings?

• How could bitcoin wallets enable decentralised identities (see Sign in with bitcoin)

• Solve design problems or think of new experiences around lightning

• Explore designs and interaction models around hardware wallets

• Use cases in your personal context (for your kids, people in your community, inheritance)

• Art - this one was up to you to define

• Education - how could we make bitcoin easier to understand and start using for more people around the world?

• Games - what were some unique playful experiences that could only be built on bitcoin?

If your idea didn’t fit in these categories, no worries, you could just go for it. As long as it was related to bitcoin in some way, it was all in good order.