2025 in Review — Trustless Work

2025 started in the best way possible.

We began the year finishing Draper University’s / Stellar Embark program — the last stretch of an experience that, looking back now, feels much further away than it actually is.

It’s a little surreal to see how much has changed since then.

Being part of Draper’s ecosystem, alongside the Stellar Development Foundation, didn’t just give us momentum or credibility. It gave us clarity.

The key insight was simple, but powerful:

If stablecoins are going to power real economic activity, escrow cannot remain bespoke, custodial, or inaccessible.

That insight shaped everything that followed.

Built in the Open, Tested Through Exposure

2025 was a year of constant movement and exposure.

We took Trustless Work on the road — not to sell, but to listen, stress-test, and learn. Through roadshows, deep conversations, open-source campaigns, and repeated pitching across the US and Latin America, we refined both the product and our understanding of the problem we’re solving.

Hackathons played a central role in this process. Each one pushed the system in a different direction and revealed new possibilities — technically and conceptually. Just as importantly, many of them allowed us to work side-by-side with open-source contributors who we hope will stay close as we enter this next phase.

Some highlights:

Stellar Casa Builders (Mexico)
We built Pacto, a P2P DEX using escrow for buyer–seller protection.
Crecimiento + Stellar Hackathon (Argentina)
Our team connected with some of the most important figures in the Stellar ecosystem across Latin America.
Solana Colosseum Hackathon
We built V1 of a Solana version of Trustless Work, proving the model is truly chain-agnostic.
Meridian / Blockchain Jungle Hackathon
We explored escrows combined with yield-bearing strategies, stress-testing how programmable trust interacts with capital efficiency.
Avalanche Hackathon (Blockchain Jungle)
We won the hackathon by building an EVM version of Trustless Work together with an open-source contributor.
DevConnect / Stellar House Hackathon
We built an early tokenization and private credit platform — a template we’ll continue iterating on in the short term.

None of these were about prizes.

They were about pressure.

Different chains. Different assumptions. Different builders.

In these environments, we met builders actively trying to use Trustless Work for their own products. We learned about their questions, frictions, and blockers — and sharpened the product because of it.

Shipping Real Infrastructure

Not all of 2025 was travel and hackathons.

Alongside all of that, we shipped a baseline escrow infrastructure layer:

A production-ready Escrow API
A full developer SDK
Escrow Blocks — pre-built UI components for faster integration
AI-assisted tooling:
- Vibe-coding guides
- MCP, providing full product context to coding engines
Multiple smart-contract iterations
A publicly published audit
And finally: mainnet usage

This wasn’t about shipping for shipping’s sake.

It was about laying foundations solid enough to scale — including real-world requirements like indexation, auditability, and reliability.

Publishing the audit was a major milestone for us. It marked the transition from experimentation to production-grade infrastructure.

Builders, Everywhere

One of the most rewarding surprises of 2025 was seeing where people were building with Trustless Work.

Builders from Africa, Asia, Argentina, Mexico, Costa Rica, Europe, New York, San Francisco — and many places in between — started experimenting, shipping, and integrating.

Some community-born projects went on to receive grants, including:

GrantFox
Boundless
KindFi

Others won hackathons, launched MVPs, or are preparing for mainnet.

Supporting builders — from early hackers to serious startups — remains central to our strategy.
If they move faster, the ecosystem moves faster.

We’re equally grateful for the startup network we’ve built through Draper University and the Stellar community. The relationships formed with founders, mentors, and investors have been some of the most valuable outcomes of the year.

Enterprise Pilots & New Financial Primitives

2025 also marked our first sustained exposure to enterprise-grade use cases.

We successfully built and supported pilots for:

Mirai-X — Real Estate Tokenization
Spanning the Middle East and Japan.
Private credit and capital allocation products across Latin America.

These pilots helped us understand:

how escrow interacts with private credit
how capital flows behave at larger ticket sizes
what enterprises actually require to adopt this technology
and where programmable trust enables entirely new financial primitives

This work directly shaped our roadmap for tokenization, private credit, and enterprise abstractions.

2025 Was Also a Breakout Year for Stellar

We chose Stellar for a reason.

And 2025 reinforced that decision.

Throughout the year, Stellar continued maturing into an institutional-grade network — not just for payments, but as a serious foundation for stablecoins, tokenized assets, yield, and interoperability.

Some ecosystem milestones that stood out:

PayPal launching PYUSD on Stellar
21X advancing regulated tokenized capital markets
RedSwan Digital tokenizing $100M+ in real estate
Mercado Bitcoin announcing $200M in tokenized assets
Centrifuge expanding decentralized RWA infrastructure
Ondo Finance scaling yield-bearing assets like USDY
MoneyGram building next-generation consumer finance apps
Circle launching CCTP V2
LayerZero strengthening cross-chain interoperability

As more capital moves on-chain, the need for neutral, programmable escrow infrastructure becomes unavoidable.

Stellar solved how money moves.
Trustless Work is solving how it waits.

2025 reaffirmed our conviction that we’re building on the right rails, at the right time.

Community Efforts

Alongside product development, we invested intentionally in community:

Monthly blockchain after-office events in Costa Rica
Speaking at regional and international events
Mentoring hackathons and bootcamps
Creating spaces for builders to connect and collaborate

This wasn’t accidental.

We’ve been very intentional about building community, attracting builders, and helping them succeed with their products — and we’re grateful to do so.

What 2025 Proved

2025 made a few things clear:

Escrow is infrastructure, not a feature
Open source is a real go-to-market strategy
Builders are the strongest distribution channel
Programmable trust is essential for the stablecoin economy to scale

Looking Ahead to 2026

If 2025 was about foundations, 2026 is about acceleration.

More integrations.
More volume.
More templates.
More tokenized private credit.
More multichain execution.
More partnerships.
More builders reaching mainnet — faster.

We’re entering the new year with: