Trexure on the Rise In Builder Spotlight

On August 6, 2026, Trexure took part in the seventh edition of Rise In’s Builder Spotlight — the series Rise In runs under the line “spotlighting web3 builders, real stories, real impact.” The episode went out online at 17:00 GMT+3.

Who was on

Mark Hugh Neri, founder of Artisam Labs, represented Trexure. Alongside him was Carl Aldrey Bergado, founder of Velo and an ambassador for Stellar Philippines.

The pairing was not accidental. Velo and Trexure were both among the ten Philippine teams that reached the APAC Stellar Hackathon Grand Finale — two builders who had just come off the same months-long sprint, talking about it while it was still fresh.

What was covered

Three threads ran through the conversation:

Building for the APAC Stellar Hackathon. What it actually takes to carry a project from submission through a national Demo Day to a regional finale — and the difference between a hackathon build and something you intend to keep running afterwards. For Trexure, that meant a treasury API for ZK-shielded Stellar payments: privacy on the wire, and records your accountant and auditor can still work with. It finished 2nd in the DeFi & Ecosystem Composability track.

Builder support from Rise In and Stellar Philippines. The part of an ecosystem that rarely makes the announcement post — mentorship, workshops, a room to demo in, and people who answer questions between the milestones. Both guests had been on the receiving end of it through the hackathon cycle.

What’s next for each project. Where Trexure and Velo go now that the competition is over, and what “after the hackathon” means when the intention was always to keep shipping.

Why we said yes

A hackathon result is a snapshot. The Spotlight format is the opposite — it asks what you learned and what you do next, which is the more useful question, and it puts that answer in front of other builders deciding whether to start something.

Thanks to Rise In for the invitation and for running the series, and to Carl for the conversation. The full episode is embedded above.