In a surprise Twitter announcement, Muneeb Ali announced the creation of a new development company Trust Machines.
Muneeb was previously the CEO of Hiro Systems, creating developer tools for building dApps on the Stacks blockchain. He has transitioned to an Executive Chairman role at Hiro.
Muneeb’s new venture is focused on developing applications on both Stacks and Bitcoin. From the Trust Machines announcement:
Trust Machines will build upon the success of Stacks, a programming layer for Bitcoin. The Stacks mainnet launch was a major unlock toward making Bitcoin programmable. We will expand on this programming layer to help make it faster and easier to develop on, and we will build applications that make Bitcoin productive, e.g., trustless Bitcoin lending.
Hello, Trust Machines — Published Feb 3
The new company is well-funded after a fund raise by several venture capital firms, including Breyer Capital, Digital Currency Group, GoldenTree, Hivemind, and Union Square Ventures. Trust Machines is launching with $150M in reserve, and has posted several job openings including a smart contract developer, full stack developer, and UI engineer.
Twitter Response
Response to the announcement was mostly positive, with some confusion about what “Bitcoin applications” actually meant.
Muneeb responded to questions in the reply section of his announcement, clarifying that Trust Machines would develop using Stacks directly.
The Stacks Ecosystem
Hiro Systems is currently a founding member of the Stacks Accelerator program, a funding arm that helps teams build proof-of-concept applications supported by grants from the Stacks Foundation.
The Stacks app ecosystem is robust, ranging from blogging platform Sigle, DeFi platforms Alex and Arkadiko, and NFT platforms Stacksart, STX NFT, and Byzantion.
Learn more about Stacks HERE.