The Boundless × Trustless Work Hackathon brought 114 participants together to explore what becomes possible when programmable escrows are available as product infrastructure.
The answer came through 31 showcased products built by Nigerian builders across freelancing, AI agents, public funding, security deposits, community finance, P2P exchange, trade finance, open-source rewards, and more.
You can view the official hackathon page.
The Boundless Story
What makes this hackathon especially meaningful for us, is the story behind Boundless.
Boundless is co-founded by Collins Chikangwu (@0xdevcollins), who is a Open Source contributor to Trustless Work. We've witnessed this platform go from idea to execution. And we are very proud of them.
That is exactly the kind of effect we aim to create with our Open Source strategy.
To turn contributors into builders, then founders, then partners.
Boundless is part of that flywheel.
Winners
| Award | Project | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| Rank #1 — Grand Prize | Conductor | 500 USDC |
| Rank #2 | CRYPT | 300 USDC |
| Rank #3 | GoPadi | 200 USDC |
| Best UI/UX Design | Sunvasi | 100 USDC |
| Best Real World Use Case | Stipend | 100 USDC |
| Best Technical Implementation | Verix | 100 USDC |
| Most Innovative Idea | Trustless OSS | 100 USDC |
| Best Use of Trustless Work | Kinetic | 100 USDC |
31 Products, 8 Escrow Themes
The most exciting part of the hackathon was the range of ideas builders brought to the table.
These projects should not be read as production-ready companies. They are early product experiments showing how programmable escrow infrastructure can be applied across real-world workflows.
The submissions clustered around eight themes:
- Work Escrows — freelance, local services, errands, contractors.
- Agentic Escrows — AI tasks, research, verification, multi-agent work.
- Proof-of-Progress Funding — grants, aid, citizen science, bounties.
- Deposit and Physical Trust Escrows — rentals, safety deposits, hardware-triggered payments.
- Community Finance Escrows — pooled contributions, savings traditions, group-controlled releases.
- Trade and Exchange Escrows — P2P exchange, RFQ, OTC, trade finance.
- Escrow Tooling — no-code builders, agreement-to-escrow flows, open-source reward rails.
- Parametric and Signal-Based Escrows — insurance, SLA payouts, data-triggered payment logic.
1. Work Escrows
Work was the most intuitive category. Builders naturally mapped Trustless Work to labor, services, milestones, and approval-based payments.
The pattern is simple:
Client funds escrow → Provider delivers → Work is approved → Funds release
MileChain
MileChain uses the Trustless Work SDK to power multi-release milestone escrows for freelancers, contractors, and corporate teams, adding AI evidence review and IPFS-anchored delivery records.
Demo: TBD
Video: Watch video
NaijaGig
NaijaGig uses Trustless Work to secure milestone-based payments for Nigeria's freelance and artisan economy, locking client funds until work is approved or resolved through a dispute flow.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
Sunvasi
Sunvasi uses Trustless Work to protect cross-border freelance contracts, allowing clients to fund milestones in escrow while freelancers receive on-chain payment after approval or AI-assisted arbitration.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
GoPadi
GoPadi uses Trustless Work single-release escrow to secure local errand payments, letting customers fund tasks upfront while Padis receive payment after proof of completion and customer approval.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
NairaLock
NairaLock uses Trustless Work escrow infrastructure to power a freelance marketplace for Nigeria, helping clients and freelancers transact without one side taking all the upfront risk.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
MilestonePay
MilestonePay uses Trustless Work-style milestone escrow to protect freelance payments, locking client funds while freelancers deliver work and get paid after approval.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
Trusta
Trusta uses Trustless Work-style USDC escrows to secure freelance milestones, releasing funds only after work is approved and making client-freelancer payments more transparent.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
2. Agentic Escrows
This may be the most future-facing theme from the hackathon.
Several teams converged on the same thesis:
AI agents can do work, but they need a payment layer that only releases funds when the work is verified.
The pattern looks like this:
User funds task → Agent performs work → Verifier checks output → Escrow releases payment
VeriTask
VeriTask uses Trustless Work to fund AI-agent tasks through milestone escrows, releasing payments only after agent outputs are verified by human review, automated validation, or agent consensus.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
Verix
Verix uses Trustless Work as the payment layer for verifiable autonomous work, releasing funds only after AI-agent execution traces and canonical receipts pass deterministic verification.
Demo: TBD
Video: Watch video
CLOWEE
CLOWEE uses Stellar and Trustless Work-style escrow coordination to help users recruit, orchestrate, and securely pay specialized AI-agent squads through a voice-first interface.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
Conductor
Conductor uses Trustless Work multi-release escrow to coordinate AI task marketplaces, locking user budgets while AI planners, agents, verifiers, and arbiters complete, approve, or resolve milestone-based work.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
Stipend
Stipend uses Trustless Work to let users pay AI researchers only after a second AI judge verifies the quality of the research, releasing escrowed USDC when the answer passes review.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
3. Proof-of-Progress Funding
These projects focused on funders, donors, grant programs, and public-interest initiatives.
The shared problem is accountability:
Money is allocated to good causes, but funders cannot always verify whether progress happened.
The escrow pattern turns funding into milestone-based proof:
Sponsor funds escrow → Team submits evidence → Verifier approves → Funds release
EcoProof
EcoProof uses Trustless Work to release public-interest and citizen-science funding only when project teams submit evidence and verifiers approve completed milestones.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
AidChain
AidChain uses Trustless Work multi-release escrows to help donors fund humanitarian aid milestones, releasing capital only after field evidence, AI checks, and human approval confirm delivery progress.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
ProofPool
ProofPool uses Trustless Work-style escrow to lock bounty competition funds, allowing teams to compete transparently while judges, peer validation, and on-chain payout rules determine rewards.
Demo: TBD
Video: Watch video
4. Deposit and Physical Trust Escrows
This theme expands Trustless Work beyond simple payments.
A key insight from the hackathon was that a depositor can also be a receiver. That means escrow can model refundable deposits, collateralized usage agreements, safety checks, and physical-world verification.
User deposits → Condition is checked later → Funds refund, release, or split
Caushun
Caushun uses Trustless Work to hold rental security deposits in non-custodial escrow, helping Nigerian tenants and landlords manage checkout evidence, disputes, refunds, and deposit releases transparently.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
CNG-Protect Safety Verification
CNG-Protect uses Trustless Work to connect vehicle retrofit payments with IoT safety verification, releasing escrowed funds only when hardware evidence confirms that safety conditions are met.
Demo: Open demo
Video: TBD
AgroShield
AgroShield uses Trustless Work-style milestone escrow to help farmers securely hire treatment vendors after AI-powered crop diagnosis.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
5. Community Finance Escrows
These projects were less about strangers transacting once and more about communities coordinating money over time.
The pattern is useful when a group already has social trust, but custody and accountability are still weak.
Community contributes → Target, vote, or condition is met → Funds release or refund
globe-thrift
globe-thrift uses Trustless Work to bring West African savings traditions like Ajo, Esusu, and Adashe into programmable escrow flows for community capital and local projects.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
POOLFI
POOLFI uses Trustless Work to help African communities collect contributions without a single treasurer holding the money, locking funds in escrow until targets, votes, or refund conditions are met.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
TrustQuest
TrustQuest uses Stellar smart contracts and escrow-backed logic to create a savings and rewards experience where user progress can be connected to locked or conditional funds.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
6. Trade and Exchange Escrows
This theme points toward higher-value commercial workflows: P2P trades, OTC settlement, RFQs, supplier verification, and trade finance.
The common problem is counterparty risk.
Buyer and seller agree → Funds lock → Proof or terms are verified → Settlement executes
Settla
Settla uses Trustless Work-style escrow logic to protect P2P stablecoin trades, helping buyers and sellers exchange Stellar USDC for local fiat without relying on centralized escrow operators.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
TrustRFQ
TrustRFQ uses Trustless Work escrow settlement to help users exchange large amounts of assets through private RFQs, giving takers and makers a safer way to settle P2P trades.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
AstraPilot
AstraPilot uses Trustless Work to coordinate escrow releases for AI-designed trade contracts, supplier verification, and milestone-based trade workflows.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
TradeFlow
TradeFlow uses Trustless Work-style milestone escrow to create digital letters of credit for trade finance, helping buyers and sellers bridge the trust gap in cross-border commerce.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
7. Escrow Tooling
Some teams did not just build vertical products. They built tools that could make escrow creation, open-source rewards, or agreement-to-payment workflows easier for other builders.
These are especially interesting because they extend the Trustless Work ecosystem itself.
ClauseKit
ClauseKit uses Trustless Work to turn service agreements, PDFs, legal text, or short messages into live escrow flows on Stellar, reducing the friction of creating enforceable payment agreements.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
Escrow Flow Builder
Escrow Flow Builder uses Trustless Work as the deployment layer for a no-code visual tool that lets anyone design milestone-based escrow flows and launch them on Stellar.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
Trustless OSS
Trustless OSS integrates Trustless Work with GitHub to automate USDC payments to open-source contributors when pull requests are merged, enabling secure bounty distribution without manual intervention or mutual trust.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
8. Parametric and Signal-Based Escrows
These projects explored escrows that respond to an external signal, data source, performance trigger, or risk condition.
This is a different mental model:
External event happens → Evidence or signal is checked → Payout condition is triggered
Nimbus
Nimbus uses Trustless Work escrows to hold USDC-funded climate insurance pools for African smallholder farmers, enabling sponsors and NGOs to support coverage that can be released through predefined conditions.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
CRYPT
CRYPT uses Trustless Work to create parametric SLA escrows that can automatically pay subscribers in USDC when a provider's API goes down.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
Kinetic
Kinetic uses Trustless Work-style escrow concepts to add trust-backed payment or verification logic to AI trading signals.
Demo: Open demo
Video: Watch video
What This Shows
The most important takeaway is not that 31 products were showcased.
The important takeaway is that builders did not need Trustless Work to prescribe one narrow use case.
They saw the primitive and applied it everywhere money needs to wait while something else happens.
That might be a completed task, an approved milestone, a verified AI output, a safety signal, a community vote, a judge decision, or a delivery record.
The interface changes. The use case changes. The trust problem stays familiar.
Build With Trustless Work
If you are building a marketplace, AI-agent workflow, grant platform, freelance product, contribution system, P2P exchange, trade finance tool, or any product where funds should move only after proof, approval, or completion, Trustless Work gives you escrow infrastructure to build faster.
Start with the Trustless Work docs.
