Stellar Dev Diaries Series: Episode 1

Ever wondered what it takes to build a web3 startup from scratch? In the Stellar Dev Diaries series, we follow the journey of a team of developers building on the Stellar Network as they go from hackathon win to getting funded and launching on mainnet.

In the Stellar Dev Diaries, we take a dive deep into the experiences of the Freelii team as they build and launch their product on the Stellar Network.

As we follow their journey, you'll get the insider's playbook: turning ideas into products, getting funded, transitioning from Web2 to Web3, and scaling a startup in a space that's still being defined. On top of that, each episode will feature real code examples with walkthroughs of the features they used and challenges they encountered.

In Episode 1, we meet José Toscano and Joseph Anthony, the brains behind Freelii, a startup that started as a hackathon win right here on Dev.to and went on to win again at Stellar’s Hack Meridian in London. Realizing that they had a winning partnership and a great product idea, José and Joseph secured funding, quit their 9-to-5 jobs, and went all in on Freelii.

In this episode, we dive into:

• The hackathon wins that sparked the journey.
• The moment José and Joseph decided to go all-in.
• Building a working prototype on Stellar.
• Using the PassKeys feature of Soroban.
• Getting funded via the Stellar Community Fund.