World Builder Residency 2025
A look at what we built together.
From May 24 to June 21, we hosted the inaugural World Builder Residency: a month-long co-living and co-building experience designed for developers, creators, and entrepreneurs solving meaningful problems for local and global communities.
The program was run in collaboration with World, the fast-growing global identity and financial network with over 28 million users. As part of World’s U.S. expansion, residents were invited to prototype applications using World ID, World Chain, and MiniKit, and test them live among a uniquely curious and committed group of real-world users at Edge Esmeralda.
Residents received scholarships, access to mentorship, and a rare opportunity to build in close proximity with an engaged, tech-forward community of peers — people eager to test new ideas, give feedback, and support fellow builders.
Residency Prize Winners
Over the course of four weeks, builders launched projects and competed for $15,000 in bounties, awarded to the most impactful, inventive, and well-integrated World apps. Additional recognition was given to projects that incorporated EdgeOS, the open-source operating system powering Edge City’s network society stack.
What followed was a creative and technical sprint across social tooling, civic infrastructure, creative AI, payments, and identity. These builders prototyped the next layer of what digital life and social tech can look like when it’s rooted in community.
We’re proud to highlight three standout projects that exemplified technical creativity, strong integration with the World stack, and meaningful applications for real users:
🥇 h011yw00d (by Rahilla Zafar & Anubhav)
For its inventive use of AI to create cinematic video from everyday posts, integrated natively with World. A storytelling tool for the remix era.
🥈 Alpha Cards (by Colton Orr)
For blending lore, humor, and digital-native design into a collectible card game that engages players both on-chain and IRL.
🥉 Yours Truly (by Cooper Wrenn)
For bridging the digital and physical with emotional intelligence—robot-penned letters powered by wallet-based payments and World ID.
These projects stood out not just for their execution, but for the worlds they invite us to build.
Meet the builders
Big thanks to everyone who joined us IRL at Edge Esmeralda, and shoutout to the teammates who supported from afar. Whether on the ground or online, you made this residency come alive.
Mateo Sauton
Mateo is building internal infrastructure at Tools for Humanity (the labs entity of World), where he focuses on designing tools for developers building with World. At Esmeralda, he worked on streamlining the onboarding flow for new builders and collaborated across teams to test early versions of World-native dev tools in a live environment. He’s especially interested in developer experience, coordination mechanisms, and designing for real-world usability.
At Edge Esmeralda, Mateo was accompanied and supported by Josh West and Ian Dilick from the World Foundation.
Rahim Iqbal
Rahim is building Rolu, an attention marketplace at the intersection of gaming and social design. At Esmeralda, he’s focused on launching 3D gameplay features and developing a new in-app social layer. On the side, he’s also working on hacking an ATM that will enable users to withdraw cash directly from their world chain wallets.
Try Rolu here.
Qendresa Hoti
Qendresa is building Prompt Passport, a lightweight tool for logging, sharing, and giving memory to prompts across creative communities. Her prototype integrates World ID, runs on MiniKit, and experiments with on-chain stamping via World Chain. At Esmeralda, she’s testing how prompts can become a new kind of social language for creative collaboration.
Try Prompt Passport here.
Sam Gbafa
Sam is building TinyCloud, a universal backend for World apps that uses a user’s World ID to store and access their data across the ecosystem. At Esmeralda, he’s helping other builders integrate TinyCloud into their own apps and supporting onboarding for World developers. They also built Muse, an AI memory bank. Sam was joined by two of his lead engineers, Roman Svistel and Charles.
Try Muse here.
Fana Gueye
Fana is building AICURATE, a trusted, gamified gateway to the AI economy. Instead of search bars and lists, AICURATE uses an AI concierge to guide users through finding and validating tools, like TripAdvisor meets Duolingo meets Steam for AI. Fana’s background combines brand strategy (Coca-Cola, Sony), community design, and trauma-informed coaching. She’s also building a 10-minute self-coaching app.
Maroua Boudoukha
Maroua is building AICURATE with Fana. At Edge Esmeralda they’re developing their MVP, pursuing grants, and running a meme-fueled Scavenger AI Hunt across the village.
Try AICURATE here.
Atin
Atin is building Authentic, a social media platform designed to share your life with the people you care about: think instagram stories, but only showing you your friends content, no ads, no creepy tracking or wasting hours scrolling. He’s at Esmeralda while the team of four builds out the core functionality (which will include World ID integration) - signup on the waitlist here, and expect a new app coming this July!
Cooper Wrenn
Cooper is building YoursTruly, a platform that turns digital messages into physical, handwritten cards—robot-written, AI-powered, and artist-designed. At Esmeralda, he’s finalizing a World miniapp with wallet-based payments, World ID sign-in, and on-chain art royalties. He’s also happy to share tools for launching in public.
Try YoursTruly here.
Rahilla Zafar
Rahilla is building h011yw00d, an AI film director for social media that turns posts and conversations into cinematic videos in real time. Built on the NAMI video orchestration engine and integrated with World, the platform is designed as a native storytelling hub for short-form content, remixing, and rewards. Anubhav, a lead dev on the project, joined Rahilla.
Try h011yw00d here.
Colton Orr
Colton is building Alpha Cards, a collectible card game inspired by crypto lore, AI mythology, and meme culture. At Esmeralda, he’s launching a World miniapp to enable digital trading, while handing out physical booster packs IRL.
Try Alpha Cards here.
Mateo Moragues
Mateo is building SimpleFi and EdgeOS, infrastructure for pop-up cities and network states. His team has launched a World miniapp that enables WLD payments at 30+ local businesses in Buenos Aires. At Esmeralda, they’re integrating EdgeOS, Edge City’s internal operating system, with World, and launching an Edge builder directory miniapp.
Dipanshu Singh
Dipanshu is building normie.tech and Zell-Pal, a platform that lets users receive card payments settled directly in stablecoins. At Esmeralda, he’s prototyping a Zelle-to-USDC onramp tailored for high-demand use cases in Venezuela and the broader LATAM region. He’s especially interested in stablecoins, DeFi, RWAs, and public goods, and especially interested in talking cryptography or Haskell.
What Comes Next
The residency was about pressure-testing ideas in a live environment, receiving real feedback, and learning from an interdisciplinary community of peers. Builders left with prototypes, relationships, distribution access, and design insights to take their projects further.
Many apps are now live or moving toward continued development with support from the World ecosystem and the Edge City network. This residency marked the first of many experiments to come.
Thank you to all the builders, mentors, testers, and supporters who made the 2025 World Builder Residency such a meaningful experience. An additional big shout-out to World for making this possible and for building the tools and infrastructure humanity needs.
Hope to see you all at Edge Patagonia.
— The Edge Esmeralda Team ☀️
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