About

All about Saving Satoshi

The year is 2139. The last bitcoin is two weeks from being mined. For months, a clock has ticked down in Satoshi Square.

As the world waits for this historic event, the network suddenly grinds to a halt.

On your Everything Watch, you receive a WhiskerWare brand holocat from someone using the name Satoshi Nakamoto. (It’s like any other e-hologram, but this one is shaped like a cat.) You open the holocat by booping its nose.

Bitcoin is serious, but learning about it doesn’t have to be

Saving Satoshi is a light-hearted, interactive role-playing game (RPG) about bitcoin tech. It combines fun, innovative challenges with storytelling and game mechanics to create a gentle entry point to bitcoin development.

It’s built with fun for curious coders and anyone that wants to learn how bitcoin really works. It’s for those that have seen the magic of bitcoin open source software (₿OSS) and are are looking for ways to start contributing.

Each chapter is filled with code-based lesson content, simulations, and programming exercises to make learning the esoteric details of bitcoin tech more enjoyable.

With simple, straightforward examples, players build solid foundations before layering on the complexity. Through an immersive UX, rich visuals, and seamless interactions, learners are taken on a journey through a variety of topics including:

  • Finding and decoding the secret message in the genesis block
  • Hash functions and proof-of-work
  • The dynamics of pooled mining
  • The basics of elliptic curve cryptography and how to derive an address from public-private key pairs
  • ECDSA message signing and verification
  • Building a transaction from scratch
  • Assembling transactions to construct a block template
  • Using the Bitcoin Core RPC API and calculating the block subsidy
  • Bitcoin Script
  • How the Lightning network works

But it’s not just about the curriculum. We believe bitcoin education can be just as creative and unique as the technology itself. That’s why the game touches on many other fascinating elements of bitcoin like culture, history, and design.

To us, bitcoin is a positive force in the world. This project is built by a passionate group of contributors under the highest standards, and it’s 100% free and open source (FOSS). To learn more about how Saving Satoshi was made, see our case study in the Bitcoin Design Guide.

From playing the game, to running a workshop, to code contributions, there are many ways to join the Saving Satoshi community. We’d be delighted to have you. To get in touch, follow Saving Satoshi on GitHub and join the #saving-satoshi channel on the Bitcoin Design Community Discord.

You can also connect with us on X, nostr, and Bluesky. We love shout outs and hearing from our users!

How to contribute

We’re an open-source project, so all doors are open for you to help shape it.

Feedback

We’re all ears! We love hearing what went well, what didn’t go well, and where there is room for improvement. You can use this form to submit feedback.

Contribute

All suggestions are welcome. We are also always looking for help reviewing and QA-ing code changes. For code improvements, you can directly open an issue or submit a pull request on GitHub.

If you want to get involved with design, story, or anything else, join us in the #saving-satoshi channel in the Bitcoin Design Discord. Mention how you’d like to contribute and we’ll help point you in the right direction.

Our commitment to privacy

At Saving Satoshi, we are deeply committed to ensuring the privacy and security of our users. We believe in transparency and want you to understand how and why we track app usage. To achieve this, we use a powerful tool called Umami.

What is Umami?

Umami is an open-source analytics platform that helps us gather essential insights about how you use our app. It allows us to make data-driven decisions and continuously enhance our product to better meet your needs. You can view the Umami dashboard here.

What Data Do We Collect?

Rest assured, we only collect non-personal and anonymized data, such as:
  1. Product Improvement: We use the data to identify areas where our app can be improved. By understanding how you use our app, we can make it more efficient, user-friendly, and secure.
  2. Compatibility: Understanding the devices and platforms you use allows us to optimize our app for various configurations, ensuring it works seamlessly for you.

Your Privacy Matters

We want to emphasize that your privacy is of utmost importance to us. We do not collect any personally identifiable information, and the data we gather is used solely for the purpose of improving our app. Your data is never shared or sold to third parties.

If you have any concerns or questions about our data collection practices or privacy policies, please don't hesitate to contact us. We are committed to providing you with a transparent and secure experience while using our app.

Enjoy!

Saving Satoshi would not be possible without the many people that have come together over the last few years to build it. It takes a village!

The core team is comprised of Adam Jonas, Christoph Ono (design lead), Satsie, BenAllenG (engineering lead), Matthew Zipkin (lesson content lead), Tuedon Tuoyo, Art Assoiants (product manager), and 4 mysterious cats that Spiral let us borrow to write the story.

We have also had a number of contributors play key roles at various points. This includes, but is not limited to, ecurrencyhodler, JT Woodhouse, JSMS, Kevin Karsopawiro, daviroo, nully0x, Vinayak Sharma, Shashwat Vangani, Aurèle Oulès, and sabakhilji.

A full list of code contributors can be found on GitHub.

Now be quick, Satoshi needs you.

Start

An open-source production by the bitcoin community.Check the code