SCF Kickstart #11 Recap

The Stellar Community Fund Kickstart (SCF Kickstart) is a five-day virtual program created to fast-track blockchain startups through a focused and immersive design sprint. This structured approach guides participants through five essential development phases — defining the MVP, refining UX, designing technical architecture, building GTM strategy, and preparing their SCF Build Award submission.

Cohort 11, held in March 2025, brought together a diverse blend of 13 projects from 9 different countries. Over the course of 5 days, participants engaged in intensive workshops, received mentorship tailored to their project stage, and refined their proof of concept and integration with the Stellar ecosystem. From those selected, all 13 projects received Kickstart Awards, in recognition of their hard work throughout the program and their potential to succeed.

Here’s what some of the teams from the Kickstart cohort had to say about their experience in the program:

“I have done several startup camps, accelerators, conferences, resource days, basically anything free and available in my communities — and this was absolutely, hands down, the most methodological and organized event. Everyone involved was giving their all and it really showed. It was all in all super impressive.”

“This is an amazing program, I think it will raise the level of early stage startups that want to enter the SCF”

Thank you to all participants, mentors, and reviewers who made this cohort a success!

A few projects received top recognition from the selection committee for their standout progress and potential — here are the projects that stood out:

XHIBIT — USA

XHIBIT offers a platform with seamless payments for immersive AI, allowing creators to monetize while users discover their work.

Vaquita — Argentina

Vaquita is a Save2Earn platform that helps Latin America improve its savings culture through gamification and rewards.

WYT Network — Hong Kong

WYT Network is a gateway for DeFi on Stellar, allowing users to execute on-chain transactions simply by sending a message.

Peridot Finance — Germany

Peridot offers a cross-chain money market that enables seamless lending & borrowing from Stellar to any blockchain with liquidity in one spot!

Dobprotocol — Chile

Dobprotocol offers secure on-chain validation to help infrastructure operators prove asset performance.

In addition to the top-recognized teams, every project in this cohort contributed to an exciting and diverse range of innovations. Meet the full cohort below.

Encifher — India

Encifher is a programmable privacy infrastructure designed to bring encrypted computation and privacy to Stellar payment rails.

Fund Stella — USA

Fund Stella is helping girls overcome financial barriers to higher education through global blockchain-powered donations*.*

Minah — France

Minah is a platform aiming to collect funding from investors from the African diaspora all around the world, in order to finance profitable and sustainable tokenized investment strategies in Western Africa.

RendBit — Nigeria

RendBit helps Africans send, receive, and save money across borders instantly and affordably without foreign accounts.

Roots Pay — India

Roots Pay offers instant USD to INR remittance to help Indian expats in the US avoid 5–7% losses with zero-spread transfers powered by Stellar ramps.

SFx — Cyprus

SFx enables African and Turkish businesses to create modular-programmable wallets on USDC, access a secure stablecoin treasury, and settle invoices — all from one unified platform.

Sliver — USA

Sliver is a self-custodial and decentralized wealth management and investment platform that offers cross-chain, diversified, and risk-adjusted yield-bearing portfolios with a familiar TradFi-like user experience.

Tipper — Mexico

Tipper is the platform for Latin American influencers, artists and communities that want to monetize their audience, get support from fans anywhere around the world, and convert their tips and earnings into Digital Dollars.

SCF Kickstart #11 Recap was originally published in Stellar Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.