Yusuf Kayam won Stellar's Pro Hackathon scale track with Pacta, an escrow platform that solves a real problem: securing medical tourism payments between patients and clinics across borders. Since the win, a clinic has reached out for a pilot—moving from hackathon prototype to production testing.
Yusuf Kayam, a Rust developer and blockchain builder who previously worked on Starknet, Mina, and Solana projects, won the Stellar Pro Hackathon scale track with Pacta, an escrow payment system for medical tourism. The project addresses a specific pain point: medical tourists booking treatments abroad often must send deposits to unfamiliar clinics with no protection. Pacta uses Stellar's payment infrastructure and Soroban smart contracts to create a trust layer between patient and provider, leveraging stablecoins and the anchor infrastructure for currency handling. Post-hackathon, Pacta has attracted real interest: a clinic in Turkey contacted Kayam directly, and he's now in early discussions about a pilot program and letter of intent. The move from hackathon demo to commercial traction in a matter of days shows how Stellar's focus on real payment problems—not just crypto-native applications—attracts builders solving problems for users who don't care about blockchain at all.
