The Time2Build developer challenge, organized by Breez in collaboration with partners such as Tether, Lightspark, Fulgur Ventures, Plan  Network, PlebLab, Geyser, and Draper University, recently announced its 2025 winners. This initiative, which ran from October 7 to November 15, 2025, with a merge period extending through December 16, aimed to integrate self-custodial Lightning Network payments into existing open-source applications utilizing the Breez SDK.

The challenge garnered significant global participation, with over 50 developer communities engaging in the event. This widespread involvement led to the creation of a diverse array of plugins, tools, and integrations, all designed for long-term utility rather than transient demonstrations. The core focus of the challenge was on implementing practical Bitcoin functionality across various domains, including merchant payments, social platforms, identity protocols, and applications built on Nostr.

Key trends emerged from the submissions, highlighting innovative approaches to Bitcoin integration. Developers frequently positioned Lightning as an interoperability layer, pairing it with protocols like Nostr and Cashu to facilitate value transfer between distinct systems without necessitating alterations to their native designs. Another notable trend was a clear preference for plugins over deep integrations. Participants favored lightweight plugins for platforms such as content management systems, forums, game engines, and creator tools. This strategy enabled faster deployment, independent iteration, and reduced reliance on upstream maintainer approvals, streamlining the development process.

A distinguished panel of judges, including Abubakar, Giacomo, Jeff, Kevin, Keyan, Lisa, Roy, and Subash, meticulously selected the winners, who received their prizes in Bitcoin. The top $3,500 prizes were awarded to four exceptional projects:

• BTCPay Server plugin (Team: Aljaz): This plugin enables Lightning payments on BTCPay Server, a widely used open-source payment processor, by leveraging the Breez SDK. It liberates operators from the complexities of managing a full Lightning node, including channel liquidity, while preserving self-custodial Bitcoin functionality.
• Evento (Team: Brianna, Andre, and Aaliyah): Lightning functionality was seamlessly integrated into Evento, a social events platform. Users can now tip participants, support hosts, send and receive sats, and interact with services like Bitrefill directly within the app, fostering a peer-to-peer value flow during events.
• Portal (Team: Alessandro, Gianluca, Gabriele, and John): The Breez SDK was integrated into Portal, a protocol and mobile application for identity and payments. This makes Lightning a native protocol feature, allowing any application built on Portal to inherently possess Bitcoin sending and receiving capabilities.
• Primal (Team: Daniel): Lightning was incorporated into the Primal web client, a prominent Nostr application. The Breez SDK provides a self-custodial wallet experience, replacing a prior custodial onboarding process that involved KYC requirements and could face restrictions based on location or email. The new onboarding process is privacy-focused, requiring no personal information and completing in approximately one minute.

Additional $1,000 awards and special mentions recognized further significant contributions. Projects receiving $1,000 awards included an OBS Studio donations plugin with Lightning support, multi-device sync, and on-chain capabilities; backend support for Nutshell Cashu mints using Spark as a Lightning provider; SatsMobi, a Telegram wallet integrating self-custodial Lightning; a CDK payment processor utilizing Spark; a Godot Engine plugin for Lightning in game development; an Umbraco NuGet package for tip jars, paywalls, and admin tools; a Discourse forum tipping plugin; and a CTFd rewards plugin for capture-the-flag security challenges.

Special prizes were also bestowed by Draper University and PlebLab. Lib de Satoshi & B4OS received an award from Draper University for integrating Lightning into a community platform to gamify education. Sparkihonne was recognized by PlebLab for creating a Nostr-focused wallet experience that intricately blends identity, messaging, and payments.

Beyond the winners, other notable non-winning submissions included Sabi Wallet, Backend for CDK mints, Jumble, Breez MCP Server – Docker Catalog, CoFi Lab, OpNode, and BitNGN.

The Time2Build challenge served as a powerful testament to the escalating developer interest in embedding Bitcoin payments directly into environments where users are already engaged, particularly through the adoption of plugins and Lightning as an essential bridging layer. Organizers conveyed that the future trajectory of development will be heavily influenced by continued builder participation in critical areas such as messaging applications, wallets, and entirely new application paradigms. The Breez team, in a press release shared with Bitcoin Magazine, articulated their vision: “For us, the next steps are clear. The era of building has begun. Whether that means adding Bitcoin to messaging apps like Signal, integrating it into leading crypto wallets, or bringing Lightning into entirely new apps with use cases we’ve yet to dream up, we can’t wait to see what you do next. It’s time to build.”