The Interledger Community 🌱: Bibi

How to Share Your Hackathon Story

Bibi — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 21:19:27 +0000

Use this guide to shape your hackathon story, keeping in mind that this is a suggested format, not a requirement. Write as much or as little as feels natural, the goal is an authentic account of your experience.

1. Introduce your team

Share your names, backgrounds, and what each person contributed. Help readers understand who you are before diving into what you built.

Prompts: Where are you from? What do you study or do professionally? How did you come together as a team?

Example: We are PayFlow — three developers who met during the Interledger Hackathon and immediately bonded over a shared frustration with how broken cross-border payments are for freelancers. Amara is a backend engineer from Lagos with five years of fintech experience. Priya is a full-stack developer based in Bangalore who has been building Web3 tooling for the past two years. And I'm Diego, a product engineer from São Paulo who spent three years at a remittance startup watching people lose money to fees on every single transaction.

📷 Team photo — A candid from the event works great. Add a caption with everyone's name.

2. Hackathon experience

Reflect on the hackathon and the challenge you tackled -- what did you learn, and how did it shape your approach going in?

Prompts: Which resources stood out? Was there a moment that shifted how you thought about the challenge?

Example: The overall experience was more hands-on than we expected. The Open Payments API session was the turning point for us. Before that, we had been thinking about our problem in terms of traditional payment rails. Afterwards, we scrapped our original idea entirely and started over.

3. Your hackathon background

Give readers context about your experience with hackathons. Is this your first? Your tenth? What keeps you coming back?

Prompts: What do you enjoy about the format? What surprised you about this one specifically?

Example: Amara and Priya are hackathon veterans. Between them, they've competed in over a dozen events. For me, this was my second. What makes hackathons different from regular sprint work is the permission to be reckless in the best possible way: you prototype things you'd never get sign-off for in a normal product cycle. What surprised us about this one was how much the mentorship changed the experience.

4. The problem you tackled

Lead with the "why." What issue did you set out to solve, and why does it matter? Then explain how Interledger technology made your solution possible.

Prompts: Who is affected by this problem? Why was Interledger the right tool?

Example: Freelancers in the Global South lose between 5% and 12% of every payment to international transfer fees — before taxes, before platform cuts. For someone earning $500 a month, that's money gone. We wanted to build something that made cross-border micropayments fast, cheap, and programmable. Interledger was the foundation: the protocol doesn't care about currency or geography, and the Open Payments standard gave us a clean API to build on top of rather than reinventing settlement logic from scratch.

5. Your tech solution

Walk readers through how your project works: the architecture, the stack, the key decisions, and any pivots along the way.

Prompts: What technologies did you use? What tradeoffs did you make? What would you do differently?

Example: PayFlow is a lightweight invoicing and payment layer built on top of the Open Payments API. A freelancer generates an invoice link in under 30 seconds; the client pays into an Interledger-compatible wallet; the freelancer receives a notification and the funds settle within seconds. We built the frontend in Next.js, used Rafiki as our local ILP node for testing, and integrated with a testnet wallet for the demo. The trickiest part was handling the grant negotiation flow cleanly in the UI — we ended up abstracting that into a single hook that other developers could reuse.

🖼 Screenshots or demo visuals — Add captions so readers know what they're looking at. A short demo clip or Loom works great here too.

6. The pitch

What was it like presenting to the judges and other participants? Be honest — vulnerability makes for great reading.

Prompts: Were you nervous? What questions came up? What did you learn from the feedback?

Example: We were nervous. We had 10 minutes and a live demo that we'd only tested successfully three times. One of the judges asked us how we'd handle regulatory compliance across different jurisdictions, and honestly, we didn't have a clean answer. But the question itself was clarifying. It told us exactly where the product needed to grow. The feedback from other teams after the presentation was just as valuable as the judges' comments.

7. Mentorship

Reflect on your interactions with mentors from Interledger and beyond.

Prompts: Was there a conversation that shifted your direction? What's one insight you're still thinking about?

Example: We had a session with one of the Interledger mentors on day two that saved us probably six hours of debugging. We'd been fighting with the incoming payment polling logic, and within 20 minutes he spotted that we were misreading the grant expiry behavior in the spec. Beyond the technical help, something he said stuck with us: "Don't build for the protocol. Build for the person who will never know the protocol exists." That became our north star for the rest of the hackathon.

8. What's next?

Are you continuing to develop your solution? Share your next steps or what you're taking with you even if the project pauses.

Prompts: What would v2 look like? Are you pursuing partners, funding, or open source contributors?

Example: We're continuing. The plan for the next 90 days is to move off the testnet and onboard five real freelancers as beta users — people in our own networks who are already dealing with this problem. We are exploring whether there's a path to building PayFlow as an open source tool that other developers can deploy for their own communities. If you're building on Open Payments and want to collaborate, we'd love to hear from you.

🏆 Closing photo — team with prize — End on a high note, celebrate the win!

The Interledger Hackathon Team

The Interledger Stack at VanJS Meetup

Bibi — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:58:51 +0000

Pizza, curious developers, and conversations about Interledger. What more could you ask for on a Thursday night??

Last week I got to present at VanJS and I had such a good time. From the moment I walked in, people were already grabbing slices, chatting in clusters, and coming up to say hi. I love that about this community!

I took the room through the Interledger Stack, basically how all the pieces fit together: ILP, STREAM, Open Payments, Web Monetization, and how they layer on top of each other kind of like the internet protocol stack, but for money. That analogy went over really well, which made me happy.

But the questions were the highlight for me. People were engaged, sharp, and not afraid to push back or go deep. I ended up staying until 9pm and there was still a line of people wanting to chat. If you want to see the questions that came up on the night, I dropped them all in #questions-and-answers in our Slack, come join us: Slack link

I'm really happy to be supporting the open payments ecosystem on this side of Canada and can't wait to meet more of you, whether that's here in Vancouver or somewhere else in the world. 🌍 Come say hi!

That's it from me! 👋🏻 Have any questions? feel free to join our Slack channel and DM me :)

Bibi
Community Manager @ Interledger Foundation 🌱

A Valentine's Day with Web Monetization

Bibi — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 19:04:10 +0000

Vancouver in February is grey, damp, and deeply committed to JavaScript.

This month’s Valentine’s Day edition of VanJS felt different though. There were pink accents, chocolate on the snack table, and that slightly chaotic pre talk buzz that only happens when developers are caffeinated and curious.

I’ve been running VanJS for a while now, and every time I look out at the room, I’m reminded why I keep doing it.

This community leans in.

A Valentine’s Theme: Relationships on the Web

For this edition, Interledger Foundation sponsored the event, which made it the perfect setting to talk about Web Monetization. Valentine’s Day is about relationships, and the web desperately needs a healthier one between creators and value.

TL/DR: So what is Web Monetization?

At its core, it is an open standard that allows websites to receive tiny, continuous payments from users as they consume content. Not ads. Not a hard paywall. Not a subscription you forget about until your credit card reminds you. It streams value in the background, in real time.

That's the theory. The real magic happened after the talk.

As soon as we wrapped, I barely made it back to the pizza table before people started coming up to me. Not polite head nods. Actual, animated curiosity. Developers wanted to understand how it could work in their own projects. Debating about documentation sites, open source repos and AI agents paying for API calls per millisecond.

A few conversations turned almost philosophical. What does it mean if value on the web becomes as streamable as video? How would that reshape incentives? Could we design systems that reward contribution without turning everything into a growth hack?

When Developers Start Connecting Dots

That is what I love about VanJS. It is never just about frameworks. Underneath the surface, there is always a deeper question about what kind of internet we are building.

Running this meetup has shown me that developers care about sustainability and fairness more than we admit. We joke about shipping fast and breaking things, but when you put a new economic model in front of a room full of engineers, they start thinking about long term incentives almost immediately.

Chocolate, JavaScript, and Big Questions

The open web is strange and unfinished. We inherited an internet optimized for ads because that is what scaled at the time. But that does not mean it is the final form. Standards evolve.

VanJS continues to be that space where ideas meet code, and where big questions about the future of the web get debated over chocolate and JavaScript.

That is my kind of Valentine’s story.

That's it from me! 👋🏻 Have any questions? feel free to join our Slack channel and DM me: SLACK LINK

Bibi
Community Manager @ Interledger Foundation 🌱
// here's an Easter Egg for those hunting 🥚

Off The Ledger: 2025 in Review

Bibi — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 22:24:00 +0000

TL/DR If you missed this month's Off The Ledger episode, you can catch Alex, Ioana and Tadej here on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es_K7JygIQU

When we sat down for the final Off The Ledger episode of the year, it wasn’t about ticking off milestones. It was about stepping back and asking: what did this year feel like from the inside? Joined by Alex Lakatos, Ioana Chiorean and Tadej Golobic, the conversation meandered through what moved us, what surprised us and where that momentum naturally wants to go next.

The Summit That Felt Like a Pulse Check

There are industry events, and then there are moments that feel like the work finally shows up in the world. The ILF Summit was the latter. Watching Raul pull back the curtain on the new Interledger card in front of a full room had this mix of excitement and relief you only feel when hard work lands.

Students, Energy and Unexpected Wins

2025 was a big year for student hackathons — Mexico, South Africa — about 600 students in total. It was chaotic in the best way: long nights, rapid pivots, local universities stepping in as partners, students walking into rooms with no idea what they’d build and walking out changed. One student team even won third place in the main hackathon event after a workshop led by our team. That doesn’t just feel good, it signals something deeper about what happens when you put trust and tools into the hands of curious people. At the same time, Rafiki moved into beta. Multi-tenancy, performance boosts, new Open Payments login flows.

Stacking Up Across Tech and Tools

We didn’t just ship features, we broadened the ecosystem. The Open Payments SDK is available it more programming languages, opening doors for those who haven’t traditionally lived in the TypeScript world. What’s remarkable isn’t just the output but the community contributions woven into it.

Another highlight reel moment was delivering custom cards and smart POS devices just in time for the summit, despite tight timelines and logistics that would make any engineer grimace.

Progress with Web Monetization also took a turn that feels like the entire web is about to shift the paradigm. The extension is getting closer to broader browser integration and open community calls have made that journey shared instead of siloed.

The Community That Keeps Showing Up

Through all of this, the ILF Community Slack surpassed 3,000 members. That’s not a vanity metric, it’s a network of people showing up and helping each other out, pushing the signals forward.

To wrap up, we're thankful for a wonderful 2025 and for all those who are part of our journey--hackathon participants, conference attendees, community members and the curious ones.

Join the Interledger conversation:

Our Community Slack Workspace
Our LinkedIn Page
Our Youtube Channel

Missed the 2025 Interledger Summit in Mexico? No problem, we got you 🙌🏻

Listening Lab: Day 1, Day 2
Demo Lab: Day 1, Day 2

Interested in learning more? Check out a few other Off The Ledger episodes:

Hey community, we are back! 🌱

Bibi — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 21:31:45 +0000

Thank you for your support throughout 2025, we’re excited for what’s ahead in 2026 and can't wait to share our goals with you! To start things off, I wanted to introduce the Interledger Community Team and share what’s coming up next.

First up, hello from me 👋🏻

I’m Bibi, and I’ve just joined the Interledger team as a Community Manager. I’m excited to be here and looking forward to getting to know all of you! Over the coming weeks, my focus will be on learning what matters most to this community, so feel free to reach out for a coffee chat to nerd out on all-things-Interledger!

Next, meet the rest of the Community Team:
@ioana_cis - Ioana is our Engineering Manager and leads the team behind the Interledger community and developer initiatives. She sets direction, supports the team, and ensures we’re building thoughtfully and sustainably, always with the long-term health of the ecosystem in mind.

@marianvilla – Marian is our Developer Relations , focused on empowering developers and builders across the Interledger ecosystem. She works closely with communities, events, and content to make Interledger more accessible, useful, and impactful, bridging product, engineering, and real-world developer needs.

@trolle – Tiffany is the Community Events Manager who works with organizations and collaborators across the ecosystem to create inclusive, impactful events that foster learning, connection, and community engagement.

Looking forward to an exciting year ahead with all of you 🚀