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Aven is a Stellar-based protocol that connects employers and freelancers through trustless, on-chain payment agreements. Clients lock a project budget inside a Soroban smart contract, and the contract releases exactly the amount justified by a freelancer’s verified active work time — no manual invoicing, no payment disputes over hours, no trust required. Every approved session leaves a permanent, portable attestation on-chain that workers can carry to future clients as proof of delivery. Aven is designed for two audiences: employers (clients) who want to fund project work with confidence that payments are tied to real, measurable output, and freelancers (workers) who want a tamper-proof record of every hour they deliver and a reliable way to get paid the moment a session is approved.

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Core components

Aven is made up of three tightly integrated parts that work together across the full payment lifecycle.

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Feature highlights

Escrow Payments

Employers fund streams up front. The budget sits in the smart contract until work is verified and approved — funds can never be released to an incorrect amount.

Work Session Tracking

The aven-stellar CLI measures real active time and Git activity, not just elapsed wall time. Idle periods are excluded automatically.

On-chain Reputation

Every approved session mints an attestation. Workers accumulate a verifiable, address-linked reputation profile that any future client can inspect independently.

GitHub Delivery Verification

Final-project sessions verify delivery branches and head commits against the connected GitHub repository, giving clients proof that the agreed work was pushed.

Privacy-conscious CLI

The CLI records only timing, branch and commit metadata, relative file paths, and diff statistics. It never reads file contents, records keystrokes, takes screenshots, or touches .gitignore-excluded paths.

Freighter Wallet Auth

Both employers and freelancers authenticate with their Stellar wallet via the Freighter browser extension. Aven never requests or stores wallet secret keys.

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Network

Aven currently operates on the Stellar testnet. All XLM and USDC balances, payment streams, attestations, and reputation records are testnet assets — they carry no real monetary value. Testnet wallets can be funded for free using the Stellar Friendbot. This is the right environment to explore Aven, build integrations, and evaluate the payment flow before any mainnet deployment.

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Next steps

Employer Quickstart

Set up Freighter, fund a testnet wallet, create your first payment stream, and invite a freelancer to start work.

Freelancer Quickstart

Install the aven-stellar CLI, authorize your wallet, start tracking a work session, and submit your first report.

How It Works

Understand the end-to-end lifecycle from stream creation and CLI authorization through payment release and attestation minting.

CLI Overview

Full reference for every aven-stellar command, option, and local configuration file.