Q1 2026 Highlights

This recap covers developments across the Cashu ecosystem during the first quarter of 2026. It begins with new projects, moves through updates to libraries and mints, and wraps up with wallet improvements and new wallets.

New Projects

Numo

One of the big highlights of Q1 was the launch of Numo, an Android point-of-sale application that lets merchants accept Bitcoin via NFC tap-to-pay without requiring additional hardware.

Powered by Cashu, Numo allows a customer’s wallet to read an NFC tag emulated by the merchant’s Android phone and write back a payment token to complete the transaction. It also supports Lightning Network invoices, making it compatible with standard Bitcoin Lightning wallets.

Payments arrive as ecash held on a mint, and merchants can configure automatic withdrawals to a Lightning address once a balance threshold is reached. Designed with merchants in mind, Numo comes with features such as inventory management, payment history, offline payments, and tipping support.

Numo is fully open source and free to use, with no platform fees charged to merchants.

Since launch, the Numo team has continued improving the app to better support merchants in daily use. For ongoing development updates, follow Numo’s X account or visit numopay.org.

Various Nutcases

Besides Numo, more than fifteen new projects were built across the ecosystem during the first three months of 2026. To give a sense of the variety, two examples, Stashu and Blackbox Node, are highlighted here.

Stashu is a project for selling encrypted files that are unlocked through Cashu payments. Files are encrypted locally in the browser before upload, so the server never stores the plaintext content. Buyers can access and decrypt the files after payment, with no account or sign-up needed.

Blackbox Node is an off-grid node that runs AI locally, enables end-to-end encrypted radio messaging and supports ecash payments without an internet connection.

Built for censorship-resistant communication and payments during outages or infrastructure failures, it only requires a laptop and low-cost radio hardware to operate.

Libraries & Mints

Cashu Developer Kit (CDK)

In Q1, the CDK team delivered a major upgrade with v0.15.0, followed by v0.15.1, which included additional fixes.

v0.15.0 introduced wallet saga patterns, improving wallet resilience and recovery from interruptions such as failed payments or crashes. The release also added asynchronous wallet operations and support for NUT-26, enabling integration with BIP-321 and BIP-353.

Cashu-ts

Cashu-ts made strong progress throughout the first quarter, with key updates shown here.

Release v3.5.0 improved Pay-to-Blinded-Key (P2BK) and added support for asynchronous melt NUT specifications.

Building on this, v3.6.0 introduced an Amount value object and bigint support, making amount handling more robust for large amounts. It also added sig_all signing, allowing multiple proofs to be signed more efficiently. NUT-19 support was also added, helping reduce latency during frequent payment operations.

Nutshell

Nutshell v0.19.0 introduced Lightning address support, Tor service integration, and background synchronization for unpaid invoices.

Release v0.19.2 later added NUT-18 payment request support across both the core library and the CLI.

Wallet Updates

Minibits

Minibits, a Cashu wallet for Android and iOS, added optimized handling for larger ecash balances and introduced PIN authentication for devices without biometric support.

The wallet also received a new logo and several smaller usability improvements.

Sovran

Sovran is a Cashu wallet for iOS with Nostr-based social features. In Q1, support for one-tap rebalance and sweep was added, making it easier to recover and reorganize ecash from pending transactions. The wallet also added automatic P2PK key rotation on receive and a built-in map for discovering nearby merchants that accept Bitcoin.

The latest quarterly update also included a redesigned interface with more than 15 themes and wallpapers.

New Wallets

The beginning of the year saw a notable number of new wallets being built. One example is ElCajù. Built in Flutter, it was developed to address the needs of the Cuban community, making private Cashu payments easier to access.

For a complete list of Cashu wallets, check out the regularly updated Awesome Cashu list on GitHub.

Wrap-up

This was a strong start to 2026 for the Cashu ecosystem, with continued progress across libraries, wallets, and new projects.

Work on libraries improved reliability and added new protocol support, while wallet development focused on usability and performance.

The efforts of the Cashu core team and the wider community during Q1 reflect the project’s goal of making private payments more accessible and easier to use. We’re excited to continue building on this progress in the next quarter.