Let us take you from zero to timechain hero

Base58⛓️🔓 is a bitcoin protocol school. Our online and in-person courses are the perfect starting place for technical beginners looking to scratch the surface to even the most experienced devs looking to challenge themselves with a dive deep into the bitcoin protocol itself. Wherever you are on your journey into the technical side of bitcoin, we're here to level you up.

Explore Our Courses

Our classes span across many facets of bitcoin, with both in-person and online classes. Check out our 'scheduled' classes below, or use one of the links to see our always available courses and exercies on Udemy and Replit.

Here's a quick key to our class difficulty ratings

  • For Everyone Good for the family and friends that are new or nothing to bitcoin, all the way down to practised core developers.
  • Entry Level Developers Little to no developer experience required, but this is a 'technical' class.
  • Developers You have a few years of full-time work experience as a developer and are very proficient in at least one programming language.
  • Experienced Devs These are our most challenging classes, that cover some of the more advanced topics in bitcoin. It's expected that you'll be familiar with the topics covered in our Transactions Deep Dive class, at a minimum.

Open Enrollment

Bitcoin Builders: Bots Edition (Beta)

Bitcoin bots lurk in the mempool, looking for transactions to snap up. In this four-week class, we’ll build three different bitcoin mempool sniping bots.

Covering Covenants (Beta)

What’s a covenant? How do they work? In this class, we’ll cover the very first ‘covenant’ opcodes (OP_CSV + OP_CLTV), how lightning uses ‘primitive covenants’, and all the new proposals that will allow for bitcoin promises to be made and…kept?

Mempools: Diving In

Navigating the mempool is one of today’s modern bitcoin dev challenges. In this masterclass, we’ll dig deep into the various problems the mempool presents and techniques for over-coming them.

Wallets for Devs

All about Bitcoin wallet protocols, such as descriptor wallets, PSBTs, HD wallets, mnemonics. (BIPs 32, 39, 174, 370), and Miniscript.

Lightning: BOLTs in a flash

How does lightning work? Come dig deep into the spec protocol with a lightning spec expert. We’ll learn how channels are opened, how payments are made and accounted for, how force-closes work, what onions are, and how the routing table is built across the network with gossip. Experts only.

Taproot Intensive

Dig deep into the new paradigms that Taproot unleashed in this intensive class that will cover tapscript, Schnorr, FROST, and MuSig2. Experts only.

Bitcoin Developer Basics

Base58’s flagship Bitcoin Developer Basiscs course. Get a hands-on view of raw transaction data, bitcoin Script, secp256k1, ECDSA, and sighashes. We cover both legacy and segwit in this class.

Coming Soon

Nix: Reproducibility at Scale

nix is an up-and-coming package manager with an emphasis on reproducibility. Learn how it works, and how to use it in your set up in this Base58 class.

Ordinal Theory

What are ordinals? Learn about ordinal theory, hunt for exotic sats, make your first inscription, and learn all about how PSBT-offer marketplaces work.

Testimonials

"As a junior developer it's a daunting task jumping into Bitcoin development for the first time, I've tried on my own and failed multiple times in the past. Base58 gave me a new opportunity to dive in again guided by a real expert in the industry along side a class of likeminded students. This has been invaluable for my understanding of the Bitcoin protocol and has given me examples and actionable next steps for developing my skills and starting to build on Bitcoin for real. Thank you Base58!"

PlebDev
Front End Engineer @ Fold

"Phenomenal course. Came into it with limited technical knowledge of bitcoin. They make it super accessible (no dev experience needed, interactive and fun) and I'm now sooo much more comfortable with the technical side of the bitcoin fundamentals. In fact, some of the things I learnt helped me while interviewing at bitcoin companies! If you're interested in bitcoin and want to learn about how it works - highly recommend taking this course!"

Super Coder
Sr. Software Engineer @ Swan Bitcoin

"I thought I knew how transactions worked in bitcoin up until I took the class. It is a deep, byte by byte dive into the different types of transactions, understandable for non-coding people. Just have an open mindset, let yourself be taught the most basic bitcoin-cli and python commands, and you are good to go. I was afraid it would be too technical, and don't get me wrong, it does get into the roots of how the transaction protocols work, but nifty managed to keep it simple and clear enough for someone with a basic bitcoin knowledge to follow."

Based Anon

bitcoin++

Started in Austin in June 2022, bitcoin++ is a global developer-focused conference series. We place a heavy emphasis on long form lectures and workshops, with smaller more-focused audiences who are excited to get deeper into the cutting edge of bitcoin tech.

Meet other developers, compete for hackathon prizes, and get plugged into the wider Base58 community.

For more information on upcoming conferences and what's next in the series check out our website btcpp.dev

Days of Talks + Learning
3
Speakers and Workshop Sessions
36
Anticipated Attendees
200+
Hackathon Prizes
$5,000+

Frequently Asked Questions

  • What payment methods do you accept?

    You can checkout with Bitcoin (onchain + lightning) or with a credit card (fiat)

  • What if I'm not satisfied with the course?

    You can get a full refund within the first week of the course. No questions asked.

  • Are there any options for team training?

    Yes! Please contact us at [email protected]

Question not answered? Get in touch with us via email [email protected] or via Twitter or Nostr.

About Us

Meet the team building the next generation of developers whose contributions will outlive them.

niftynei

Founder

Lisa Neigut, aka niftynei, is a world-renowned bitcoin and lightning expert. A lightning protocol developer at Blockstream for Core Lightning by day, she leads Base58 bitcoin protocol classes at night. nifty is currently on sabbatical from Blockstream, working on a book about transacting with bitcoin and building out curriculum for Base58.

Kody Low

Sequencer In-Chief

Kody is a bitcoin hacker and Head of Developer and Product Support for Fedi. He’s been teaching and contributing to open source bitcoin development for over two years. Prior to Bitcoin, Kody served as a Marine Infantry Officer.