I spent 2.5 years building open-source software that I'll never charge for. Here's what I learned.
In early 2023 I started building Bitcoin-Safe, a desktop wallet for Bitcoin self-custody. No business model. No SaaS. No subscription. Just free, pure FOSS that I believed needed to exist.
Most advice on Indie Hackers would tell you that's a terrible idea. And honestly, for the first year, it felt like it was. Here's what actually happened and what surprised me.
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The problem I was trying to solve
Bitcoin self-custody is supposed to be the whole point of Bitcoin. Hold your own keys, trust no one. But the tooling to do it properly — specifically multisig, where you split control across multiple hardware devices so no single failure can wipe you out — was brutally complex.
I'm a developer. I could work through it. But every time I tried to explain it to someone non-technical, I watched their eyes glaze over halfway through step two.
So I built something simpler. A wallet with a proper setup wizard, PDF backup sheets, hardware wallet support out of the box, and a UI that didn't assume you had a CS degree.
I also had a more technical itch: I didn't want the wallet to rely on Electrum servers for syncing. Asking someone else's server what your balance is felt like a weird compromise at the core of a self-custody tool. So I built Compact Block Filter support — private, serverless syncing built into the wallet.
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What building FOSS actually taught me about growth
Without revenue, you have to find other currencies. Mine turned out to be: trust, community, and distribution through credibility.
Getting listed on bitcoin.org isn't something you can buy your way into. You have to build something the community genuinely respects and we made it! Same with bitcoin.it, the wiki threads across 10 languages on bitcointalk.org, and eventually an OpenSats grant in March 2025.
That's a slower indirect feedback loop than speacks by itself. and it compounds in a way that paid acquisition doesn't.
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The thing I got badly wrong
I underinvested in communication for the first 18 months. I shipped features, fixed bugs, and assumed people would find the project through GitHub.
They didn't. Or rather — the people who did find it were almost entirely developers who could read a README. The people I'd actually built it for — intermediate Bitcoin users who wanted security without complexity — weren't finding it at all.
I had built the right tool and put it in the wrong places.
That's what I'm working on now. Getting Bitcoin-Safe in front of the people it was actually designed for — not just the ones who can find a GitHub repo on their own.
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One question for this community
For those of you who've built FOSS tools or anything without a direct revenue model: how did you figure out who your real user was, and how did you reach them? and most importantly, how dd you initially monetise your product?
I have a theory that in open-source, you often build for yourself and then discover the actual audience later. Curious if others have experienced that gap — and what closed it.
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Bitcoin-Safe is a free, open-source desktop wallet for Bitcoin self-custody. It supports multisig, all major hardware wallets, air-gapped signing, and more than 21 languages. No accounts, no KYC, no tracking, no cloud. Everything in the block chain, learn more at [bitcoin-safe.org](https://bitcoin-safe.org)
