Normal 2025 Recap

A deep dive into 2025 Making Crypto Normal

2025 was the year Normal crossed the line that matters most.

This was the year Normal evolved from a custodial, centralized product into a fully self-custodial, decentralized protocol. Users own their assets, logic lives onchain, and trust is enforced by code rather than intermediaries.

It was also a year where the team grew, the protocol matured, the codebase exploded, and the vision sharpened. A year of shipping, traveling, debating architecture, hosting real-world conversations, and laying foundations that will outlast any single cycle.

Here’s our look back at what we built, who we built it with, and why this year mattered.

Normal Milestones

From Denver to CTO: Jay’s Journey

Some of the best hires don’t start with interviews. They start with conversations.

We met Jay at our first Normal event, in March at ETH Denver, when we partnered with Zo House and hosted a series of events over the weekend. At the time, Jay was a full-stack engineer with a sharp intuition for systems design and a rare ability to move between product, infrastructure, and execution without friction.

By the end of the year, it was obvious. Jay was not just contributing, he was leading. By December, he stepped into the role of CTO, taking ownership of the protocol architecture, smart contract strategy, and long-term technical roadmap. His progression mirrors Normal itself: fast, opinionated, and grounded in first-principles thinking.

Special shoutout to Zo House for being part of the connective tissue that makes moments like this possible. Communities matter. Serendipity compounds.

One Full Year on Stellar: 30,000 Lines of Conviction

Towards the end of 2024, we made a deliberate decision to build on Stellar, because of their speed, cost and global scalability.

By the end of 2025, that decision resulted in over 30,000 lines of production-grade smart contract code, forming the backbone of a fully decentralized system:

• Self-custodial digital wallets

• Automated Market Makers (AMMs)

• A decentralized exchange (DEX)

• Synthetic asset infrastructure

• Fully customizable, on-chain crypto index tokens

This marked a fundamental shift for Normal. What began as a centralized product evolved into a protocol where users custody their own assets, indexes rebalance transparently onchain, and capital moves without relying on centralized exchanges or bridges.

This was not copy-paste DeFi. Building on Stellar required deep protocol-level thinking, new abstractions, and careful design to balance safety, performance, and composability.

Security First: The Halborn Audit (Backed by SDF)

In 2025, Normal underwent a comprehensive security audit with Halborn, one of the most respected teams in protocol security. Launched on July 2nd, 2025, the 4.5-week audit reviewed over 27,000 lines of Soroban and Rust code across eight core smart contracts that power Normal on Stellar. The audit was fully supported by the Stellar Development Foundation through its Audit Bank program.

Halborn worked closely with our core engineering team to rigorously evaluate collateral vault logic, synthetic asset mechanics, AMM price-peg behavior, oracle integrations, and index mint and redeem flows. Rather than treating security as a checkbox, this process sharpened our internal threat models and raised the bar for how we design, review, and ship protocol upgrades going forward.

Grateful for the support by the Halborn team. Thank you Pierre, Adam, Arabdha, Gonzalo, Ayessa and Balazs for making this possible!

Designing Normal: Building the Frontend with Niko

In 2025, Normal strengthened its frontend and product execution with the addition of Niko Gorjan, a frontend engineer from Slovenia with a rare mix of technical rigor and design intuition.

Justin, our cofounder & US pro wrestler, first connected with Niko through a unscripted meeting while Niko was living and working remotely in a small town in Slovenia. One of those moments that perfectly captures how global and builder-driven crypto still is.

Before joining Normal, Niko was a lead developer at Relume.io, where he built reusable React and Next.js systems powering the ShadCNBlocks ecosystem. At Normal, Niko has been instrumental in shaping the user-facing experience of the protocol, translating complex DeFi primitives into clean, intuitive interfaces that do not compromise on power.

Meeting the Community: Three Cities, One Direction

2025 was also the year Normal showed up in the real world.

We hosted 3 community events across 3 continents:

• Denver at ETH Denver in March, where we met early believers, builders, and contributors, and where key relationships, including Jay’s, began in earnest

• Bangalore at Zo House in June, bringing the protocol to one of the most technically dense crypto communities in the world, in the most non-technical way - a rooftop DJ set

• Rio de Janeiro at the Stellar Meridian Conference in September, connecting with the global Stellar ecosystem and sharing how Normal is pushing the boundaries of onchain asset management

Each event reinforced the same lesson. Strong protocols are built in public, with real people, across geographies.

Securing the SCF Grant: Fuel for the Long Game

In 2025, Normal successfully secured a grant from the Stellar Community Fund (SCF). This was not just non-dilutive capital. It was validation.

The SCF grant supports continued protocol development on Stellar, deeper ecosystem integrations, improved developer tooling, and long-term sustainability of Normal. More importantly, it aligned incentives. SCF backing means we are building infrastructure the ecosystem actually needs.

Team Growth: Creative Direction, Marketing, and Momentum

This year marked a step-change in how the Normal team operates.

• In January 2025, we onboarded Amit Anand as our Head of Marketing. He was integral in laying the foundation for Normal’s brand identify and overall marketing strategy. Our marketing evolved from announcements to driving narrative, focusing on positioning, education & long-term trust.

• Initially contributing to business development, Jake Penzato worked with Amit during Q1 and soon stepped into the role of Creative Director, shaping Normal’s visual identity, brand language, and creative output across product, content, campaigns & events.

• Jay joined over the summer as a full-stack developer and soon stepped into the role of CTO, leading protocol architecture and long-term technical roadmap.

Going into 2026, we are now very well positioned, with strong leadership, technical & marketing teams.

Normal Community

Closing Thoughts

2025 was not about hype. It was about transformation.

• Normal became fully onchain.

• Users became self-custodial.

• The protocol became real.

• We built serious infrastructure.

• We grew serious people.

• We earned serious trust.

And we did it while staying true to a simple idea.

Make crypto investing more normal, without making it less powerful.

2026 is where that compounding becomes impossible to ignore.