GrantFox Receives a Stellar Community Fund Build Award

🎉 We’re very happy to share that GrantFox has received a Stellar Community Fund Build Award.

This is an important milestone — not just for GrantFox, but for how open-source collaboration is evolving across the Stellar ecosystem.

GrantFox is on the way to becoming the platform for open-source collaboration on Stellar, and potentially a foundation other ecosystems can learn from as well.

A real ecosystem moment

Before GrantFox, most open-source collaboration in Stellar was happening through OnlyDust.

OnlyDust played a meaningful role in the ecosystem. It enabled developer discovery and provided the tools and reward mechanisms that allowed projects like Trustless Work to be discoverable, maintained, and improved by open-source contributors. For a long time, it was the primary place where builders and projects found each other.

But after a series of setbacks, OnlyDust decided to step back from Web3.

That decision left a real gap.

Not because collaboration stopped — builders were still there — but because the infrastructure for discovery, coordination, and incentives disappeared. Platforms that relied on OnlyDust to stay visible to contributors felt that impact immediately.

And that’s where GrantFox stepped in.

The GrantFox team didn’t wait for the ecosystem to slowly reorganize itself. They pivoted fast, adapted what they were already building, and focused on filling that void with something pragmatic: a community-built platform, designed specifically for Stellar, at exactly the moment it was needed.

This wasn’t about replacing the past.
It was about continuity.

From pivot to proof

What followed was execution.

In a very short timeframe, GrantFox:

Shipped a working pilot
Onboarded real Stellar projects
Launched what we now call open-source waves
Tested collaboration, discovery, and reward flows in the open

We participated directly in these pilots.

They worked.

Projects found contributors.
Contributors shipped real, scoped work.
Progress was visible, attributable, and easy to follow.

That feedback loop — discovery → contribution → recognition → reward — is what open source needs to scale beyond goodwill and heroics.

More than the next OnlyDust

GrantFox isn’t here just to become the next OnlyDust.

It’s here to become a better version.

By leveraging Trustless Work for payouts, GrantFox introduces something that didn’t exist before at this level:

Non-custodial, trustless payouts
On-chain auditability of rewards
Clear linkage between work completed and funds released

This raises the bar for open-source collaboration.

Instead of opaque reward processes and manual reconciliation, contributors and projects get transparency by default.

We’re genuinely excited — and curious — to see how GrantFox continues to experiment with Trustless Work to design fairer, more accountable reward mechanisms for open-source contributors.

This is where infrastructure starts shaping behavior.

Built by the community, for the community

There’s also a strong human story here.

GrantFox is built by a Costa Rican team, and Joel — one of the co-founders of Trustless Work — is also part of the GrantFox team. It’s a great example of how open source compounds over time:

Contributors become builders.
Builders become founders.
Teams overlap, learn, and ship together.

No hype. Just momentum.