Polar

active · Grant-funded contributor (Btrust Starter Grant)

Polar lets developers spin up local Bitcoin and Lightning networks — LND, Core Lightning, and Eclair nodes wired together over Docker — without touching testnet or signet. It’s the tool most Lightning app developers reach for when they need a throwaway network to test against.

My role

I contribute under a Btrust Starter Grant, focused mostly on cross-platform reliability: Windows/WSL2 quirks, Docker volume behavior, and node lifecycle handling (locking, unlocking, backup/restore of seeds and channel state). A lot of the work is unglamorous compatibility fixing — the kind of thing that doesn’t show up in a changelog headline but determines whether a new contributor’s first docker compose up actually works.

Sample milestones below — replace with real PR links before publishing:

Fixed Core Lightning unix-socket handling under Docker on Windows hosts (path/volume mapping issue).
Improved node lock/unlock UX and error messaging when a wallet is already unlocked elsewhere.
Documented seed phrase and channel backup export/import flow for new node types.