About PoWBoT

What It Does

PoWBoT is a Telegram bot that verifies and rewards Proof of Work (PoW) – real-world evidence of Bitcoin adoption happening on the ground in Africa.

Here's how it works:

• A project submits a link to an X or Nostr post showing a Bitcoin payment at a local merchant
• The bot automatically verifies the post meets basic criteria
• A human reviewer watches the video and approves or rejects
• If approved, the bot sends sats via Lightning to the merchant, the project, and the reviewer
• The post is liked and reposted on Nostr to amplify the signal

The bot serves the CBAF – a network of 42 grassroots Bitcoin projects across Africa, and growing.

The Origin Story

The Telegram bot was built by someone with no programming experience.

It started in December 2025 with a simple message to Grok: "Help me write a basic Telegram bot."

Over the following weeks, the project evolved from a bare-minimum welcome message into a full-featured Proof of Work verification system – first with Grok, then continued with Claude.

Built With

• Python + python-telegram-bot
• SQLite (payment ledger)
• Blink API (Lightning payments)
• Nostr SDK (likes, reposts)
• Google Sheets API (tracking)
• BTCMap API (merchant data)
• Twitter Syndication API (X posts)
• mempool.space API (block countdown)
• GitHub Pages (dashboard hosting)

The Point

You don't need to be a programmer to build useful things. With open source software, AI assistance, and persistence, anyone can create real working software that adds value.

This bot has processed hundreds of PoW posts and rewarded dozens of projects and merchants across Africa.