Open-source, gamified onboarding that takes Rust developers from zero to a production-deployed Soroban contract in under 8 hours.
This is the same project that received a prior-round rejection citing "concept and design stage with no prototype or active development." The proposal below is written as strongly as possible, but submitting as-is will likely receive the same rejection unless the items below are closed first.
Required before pressing submit:
stellar-speedrun exists and is linked from this applicationStellar Speedrun Platform — an open-source, gamified onboarding platform that takes Rust developers from zero to production-deployed Soroban smart contracts in under 8 hours, modeled on Speedrun Ethereum but built natively for Stellar.
This is a novel developer-tooling primitive. Stellar has Stellar Quest for protocol fundamentals and Soroban Docs for reference, but no end-to-end project-based learning platform that walks a developer through deploying production-style contracts (NFT, AMM, multi-sig, etc.) the way Speedrun Ethereum does for the EVM. This is an Open-track build because it creates a new resource, not an integration of an existing one.
Three Stellar-specific reasons this can only work here:
Soroban developer onboarding has a documented friction problem. Three concrete data points:
#soroban-help volume on Stellar Devs Discord is repeated environment-setup questions: cargo build failures, soroban-cli version mismatches, Freighter wallet connection. A speedrun-style preconfigured environment removes this entire question class. (Quantify: "X% of last 100 questions in #soroban-help.")The cost of this friction: Stellar loses developers to chains with smoother onboarding. Solving it directly grows the active builder base — the bottleneck for everything else SCF is trying to fund.
A learn-by-deploying platform with five core pieces:
git clone && cd && make setup reproducibly installs Rust, soroban-cli, node, and configures testnet. Tested on macOS, Linux, and WSL2.soroban-react + Freighter wallet, so each challenge ships with a working dApp UI the learner extends.All code MIT/Apache-licensed in the public stellar-speedrun GitHub org. Try the interactive demo →
Fill in honestly with what's actually shipped by submission day — DO NOT inflate. Reviewers cross-check.
[link to public GitHub org with NFT Minting challenge deployed][URL to deployed frontend; testnet contract ID][3-min screencast — Loom, YouTube unlisted, or self-hosted][N developers signed up for early access; link to signup form][Discord conversations, hackathon mentions, dev testimonials — quote 1–2 with names/handles][N] active Vietnamese blockchain developers, with structured launch plans tied to existing VBI Academy course infrastructure.┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ GitHub: stellar-speedrun/ │
│ ├─ challenges/ │
│ │ ├─ 01-nft-mint/ (Soroban contract + UI) │
│ │ ├─ 02-token-vending/ │
│ │ └─ ... │
│ ├─ scaffold/ (shared dev env) │
│ │ ├─ soroban-cli setup │
│ │ ├─ Rust toolchain pin │
│ │ └─ docker-compose for verifier │
│ └─ platform/ (web app) │
│ ├─ Next.js + soroban-react │
│ ├─ Freighter wallet connector │
│ └─ Leaderboard (Cloudflare D1 / Workers) │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
↓ deploys to
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Stellar Testnet │
│ ├─ Per-learner challenge contracts │
│ ├─ Reward distribution contract (community pool) │
│ └─ Verifier reads contract state via RPC │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
soroban-sdk (latest stable). Each challenge has unit + integration tests against soroban-cli simulation.soroban-react for contract bindings + @stellar/freighter-api for wallet.Total ask: $95,000 USD in XLM — paid in 4 tranches (10% / 20% / 30% / 40%).
stellar-speedrun GitHub organization with MIT licensesoroban-react frontend live (publish URL), Freighter wallet integration workingmake setup flow documented and tested by 3 external developers (docs/feedback-m1.md)tutorial.md, solution-stub.rs, automated test suiteWe're asking $95,000 (not the $150K cap) to right-size to deliverables and leave room for follow-on funding once we have shipped traction.
| Category | Hours | Rate | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Soroban contract development (6 challenges × ~30h) | 180 | $80 | $14,400 |
| Frontend / soroban-react integration | 320 | $65 | $20,800 |
| Verifier infrastructure (Workers + D1) | 80 | $70 | $5,600 |
| Tutorial writing + technical content | 160 | $60 | $9,600 |
| External Rust contractor (advanced challenge + audit) | 100 | $90 | $9,000 |
| Project lead / DevRel / community | 240 | $60 | $14,400 |
| Design + UI assets | 60 | $55 | $3,300 |
| External alpha testing incentives (10 × $100) | — | — | $1,000 |
| Reward pool seed (XLM for first 250 learners) | — | — | $7,500 |
| Domain, infra, third-party tools | — | — | $1,400 |
| Buffer for contingency (~10%) | — | — | $8,000 |
| Total | $95,000 |
Total dev hours = ~1,140 across 22 weeks for a 2-person core team plus contracted Rust engineer. Reasonable, not aggressive.
[N] Vietnamese blockchain developers[link the repo if public — this is the most relevant credential][name 1–2 if you have warm intros, or note "candidates from SCF Audit Bank"]What we're explicitly not doing: taking on infrastructure beyond our scope. The platform runs on Cloudflare's free / low-cost tier; we are not building our own RPC layer, indexer, or wallet — we are using Stellar's primitives and existing tooling as designed.
| Risk | Mitigation |
|---|---|
| Soroban-react / SDK breaking changes | Pin SDK versions per challenge. Each challenge has its own lockfile so older challenges keep working as SDKs evolve. |
| Sybil attack on XLM rewards | Cap rewards at low value (5–20 XLM); require unique testnet addresses with non-trivial setup; manual review on top leaderboard slots. |
| Maintenance burden post-grant | Build with contribution-friendliness from M1 (clear CONTRIBUTING.md, modular challenge format). Plan handoff conversation with SDF / Stellar Foundation in M4. |
| Contractor availability | Backup candidates identified. If primary unavailable, narrow M4 scope rather than miss the milestone. |
| Demand validation | Waitlist running before submission, not after. If signups stall below 50 at M2, pivot challenge ordering toward what waitlist users said they wanted. |
github.com/stellar-speedrun (exists by submission)Stellar is in the middle of a Soroban developer onboarding wave. SCF 7.0 explicitly calls out execution-ready teams that grow the ecosystem. Speedrun Ethereum took the EVM ecosystem from "you should learn Solidity" to "complete this 6-week speedrun and you're ship-ready" — and there's no equivalent on Stellar. This is a 6-month build that compounds as more developers pass through; if it ships in 2026, every Stellar hackathon after H2 2026 has a structured prep path.
A previous version of this concept was reviewed in an earlier SCF round and received feedback that the project was at concept stage without a working prototype. That feedback was correct, and it's the reason this submission includes [working NFT mint contract on testnet / live frontend / waitlist of N / GitHub commits over the past N weeks]. The concept hasn't changed — but the project now ships code. We'd appreciate the panel comparing this submission against the prior one as evidence of execution.
| Form field | This page |
|---|---|
| Project Name | §1 |
| Tagline / Short description | §1 |
| Track (Open / Integration / RFP) | §2 |
| Why Stellar | §3 |
| Problem | §4 |
| Solution | §5 |
| Current Status / Traction | §6 |
| Technical Approach | §7 |
| Milestones | §8 |
| Budget | §9 |
| Team | §10 |
| Risks | §11 |
| Licensing / Open source | §12 |
| Referral code | (paste at top of form) |
Good luck. Ship the M1 artifacts first, then this writeup will land very differently.