Trust Vault

Trust Vault is a decentralised escrow on Solana enabling secure, direct P2P wallet-to-wallet crypto trading without relying on centralised exchanges.

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Inspiration

I was inspired to start this project because of the real challenges I—and many other Nigerians in the Web3 space—face when buying crypto.

We can’t use our credit cards to buy directly, so we rely on P2P trading through exchanges like Binance. But in 2024, after tensions with the Nigerian government, Binance pulled out of the market. They delisted NGN, leaving us stranded Binance Delists Naira P2P Trading with no easy way to convert fiat to crypto and back.

People scrambled to find alternatives, but none matched Binance’s scale or safety. Many got scammed using informal vendors. I was a victim too: the vendor asked me to send USDT first, then blocked me after receiving it.

That experience made me determined to find a better way—one that lets people do P2P trades securely and without fear of scams, even in a country where platforms can be censored overnight.

I also saw the limitations of existing exchanges’ P2P systems. They’re often geo-restricted—you can only trade within your country or region. But crypto is borderless, so why shouldn’t P2P trading be? If I’m Nigerian and have a dollar account, I should be able to trade with anyone, anywhere.

Finally, I asked: Why should I have to use a centralized exchange at all? Why can’t I do a P2P trade directly from my wallet?

These challenges are exactly what I want to solve with Trust Vault: a decentralized escrow platform that enables users to carry out secure P2P transactions directly from their wallets, with no geographical restrictions or need for centralized intermediaries.

What it does

Trust Vault is a decentralized escrow platform on Solana that enables secure, borderless P2P transactions with no requirement for KYC.

Users can buy and sell crypto directly from their wallets without relying on centralized exchanges. All seller and buyer information is encrypted before being sent on-chain for security and privacy, and users also receive Discord bot notifications about their transactions.

It supports two modes:

1. Sell First

  • The seller creates the escrow.
  • The buyer reserves and locks the tokens.
  • The buyer pays the seller’s account.
  • The seller releases the tokens only after confirming payment.

2. Buy First

  • The buyer creates a request.
  • The seller fills it.
  • The buyer pays.
  • The seller confirms before releasing tokens.

Dispute Resolution

  • If a dispute occurs, an admin wallet reviews the evidence submitted by both parties on our discord and resolves the case securely on-chain.

All of this is designed to be trustless, decentralised, and accessible globally with low fees of 0.05%, enabling truly borderless crypto trading—especially in regions with heavy restrictions or fraud risk.

How we built it

Trust Vault was built using Bolt.new as our primary no-code/low-code platform. Bolt.new allowed us to quickly design and prototype the Rust backend logic for our escrow system. We adapted the escrow state design from the Solana Developers Bootcamp Swap Program , but modified it to support reservation instead of direct token exchange, and to require confirmation before releasing tokens. The frontend UI was inspired by leopham’s designs. I also created the encryption process and Discord bot notification system, with help from Claude.ai and ChatGPT to model the flow. Finally, Bolt.new tied everything together into a live, working app.

Problems faced

First, I want to say a huge thank you to Bolt.new for this opportunity.

This is my first project ever. I’m a final-year medical student with no coding background, so it was extremely difficult—I was learning and building at the same time.

What should take minutes to debug took me days of researching, watching videos, and testing prompts. Building the encryption program and bot was particularly challenging because there was no scaffold or tutorial to follow. Bolt.new’s AI tools were very helpful in straightening things out.

Deployment was another challenge. I thought I was done, but ran into “page not found” errors deploying a Next.js project on Netlify. I had to return to Bolt.new and ChatGPT to figure out why, and also realized my bot couldn’t be deployed there, forcing me to learn Railway as an alternative.

Time constraints were also tough—building two complete flows (Buy First and Sell First) plus dispute resolution, encryption, bot notification, and finally making a 3-minute demo video explaining it all was a lot for a total beginner.

Challenge Compliance

  • Deploy Challenge: trust vault was fully deployed on netlify
  • Startup Challenge: my encryption and discord bot notifications database are all managed by supabase
  • Inspirational Story Challenge

Accomplishments that I’m proud of

  • Using my own painful experience as motivation to build something that can help others avoid scams.
  • Creating a fully functional prototype demonstrating real wallet-based escrow on Solana with Buy-First, Sell-First, encryption, and transaction notifications.
  • Doing all of this as someone with no coding background, entirely using Bolt.new, within 30 days.
  • Achieving what I thought I would have to wait until after medical school to even start learning.

What i learned

  • Motivation is critical—there were days I wanted to give up, but I reminded myself why I wanted to create something truly decentralized.
  • How Solana programs work, including account rent and closing accounts to refund rent.
  • How IDLs are used to build the front-end for Solana programs, and the importance of local testing before deployment.
  • The value of debugging and logging outputs to trace errors.
  • Most importantly, the power of no-code/low-code tools like Bolt.new in Web3 development—they can deliver complex apps in days even for complete beginners.

What's next for Trust Vault

  • Mainnet deployment with a complete audit.
  • Integration of Express Settlement, working with liquidity providers to offer instant trades with lower risk.
  • Multi-chain support, expanding to other blockchains to increase user access.
  • A governance system to make it truly decentralized, allowing users to have a say in the platform’s direction.

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