R0GUE’s 2025 Year in Review

2025, the Year of the Snake, marked a period of reflection, transformation, renewal, and reinvention. At R0GUE, we lived this symbolism fully; shedding our skin and transitioning from a focus on core Polkadot product development into a new paradigm of tier-1 Web3 and AI consulting.

It was a year of great change, vision refinement, evolution, and, as always, challenging the status quo.

We consciously expanded from our Polkadot ecosystem DevX roots, and we transitioned from our core product focus to high-impact consulting, focused on visionary partnerships and the delivery of real-world, high-stakes Web3 systems.

At the same time, we made deep strides into Artificial Intelligence, expanding both our technical capabilities and client engagements across blockchain, AI, trusted execution environments, and confidential inference.

As we move forward with deliberate intent, it is equally important to reflect on what has been achieved. Now venturing into 2026, the Year of the Horse, symbolizing speed, momentum, and bold action; we take a moment to reflect on what we shipped, shaped, and brought forth into existence over the past year, while looking forward to some exciting things on the horizon.

R0GUE Reforged: Recalibrated for Impact

2025 was the year R0GUE made its position explicit.

We transitioned fully into a blockchain consultancy, built for teams operating at the edge of what’s possible, where architectural precision matters, trade-offs are material, and success is the only option.

This was a process of refinement and full articulation of our mission, vision, and ideals, covering:

• A complete website redesign and rebrand
• Clear articulation of our services, products, and proof of work
• A sharp outline, visible to everyone, of our blockchain development expertise, infrastructure, and delivery

The result is a R0GUE that looks the way it works: precise, pragmatic, and built to challenge convention through execution. We ship verifiable proof-of-work to deliver high-impact material change.

Strategic Partnerships: Network Drives Impact

R0GUE x Xcavate: Building Decentralized Systems for Human Impact

Our partnership with Xcavate represents a manifestation of our ethos, one focused on real-world impact and long-term societal utility.

In 2025, R0GUE formed a strategic partnership with Xcavate, evolving from mainnet readiness support into a long-term collaboration centered around RealXEducation and decentralized knowledge infrastructure.

This partnership strengthens how education platforms can be built on-chain:

• Low-trust credentialing and verification systems
• Programmable learning outcomes and incentives
• Market-driven knowledge coordination with minimal institutional overhead

We are humbled to have been invited by Xcavate to the “Web3 Education, Innovation & Opportunity” event at the House of Lords in October 2025.

Together, we are building infrastructure that treats education not as static content, but as composable, verifiable, and economically aligned on-chain systems, enabling new knowledge markets that scale globally without relying on heavy centralized institutions. We are humbled by the vision of Xcavate, this is just the beginning.

R0GUE x Braille: Execution Partners

Our rebrand was only the beginning.

In 2025, R0GUE entered into a strategic partnership with Braille, formalizing a collaboration that brings together world-class design and protocol-level engineering.

This partnership strengthens how we deliver end-to-end systems:

• UX that respects both user and protocol needs
• Engineering that doesn’t get convoluted by misaligned abstractions
• Design that understands engineering constraints, not just aesthetics (and vice-versa)

Together, we've built an engagement model where design and infrastructure evolve in unison, enabling products and platforms that are aesthetically pleasing, durable, and conducive to user adoption. We are honoured to be a trusted collaborator.

Building on these foundational partnerships, R0GUE has been actively cultivating strong relationships across AI infrastructure, decentralized compute, and the broader Web3 ecosystem.

As new collaborations materialise, we will be excited to formally announce them and clearly articulate the strategic direction they represent.

Polkadot Ecosystem Work

R0GUE’s roots in the Polkadot ecosystem run very deep, and in 2025, our work became even more focused, intentional, and impactful.

We concentrated on the areas where we consistently create the most ecosystem impact: developer experience, tooling, smart contract infrastructure, and ecosystem reliability.

Pop CLI: The shortest distance from idea → build → deploy on Polkadot

In 2025, through a very fruitful and collaborative partnership with the Web3 Foundation, as part of the Decentralised Futures Program, Pop CLI became core developer infrastructure for building on Polkadot, and was added to the official Polkadot documentation as the only quickstart parachain development tool.

The shared understanding behind Pop's development was to materially enhance Polkadot's developer experience (DevX) landscape, by giving developers one tool to achieve their objectives. The story of Pop CLI goes all the way back to 2023 with what started as a beta prototype to simplify parachain and smart contract workflows has now evolved into a production-grade, ecosystem-integrated developer tool, tightly aligned with Polkadot’s official tooling.

This was no minor feat; it was an intensively collaborative, milestone driven delivery, of public good infrastructure. We are grateful for having had the opportunity to work so closely with the Web3 Foundation on this initiative.

We are also very thankful for their kind words and support of R0GUE's delivery capabilities in respect to their collaboration with us.

“Collaborating with the R0GUE team was highly positive — the robust documentation, user-friendly Pop CLI, and excellent support to deploying teams were consistently impressive.”

Through this partnership and a subsequent proposal funded by the Polkadot community, Pop CLI continued to evolve from a scaffolding tool into a developer platform, designed around how teams actually build:

• Faster onboarding with fewer fragmented tools to consider
• Clearer workflows for smart contracts and chains
• Reduced friction between local development and real networks

Pop CLI remains one of R0GUE’s most tangible contributions to the Polkadot ecosystem, a reflection of our core beliefs that powerful infrastructure requires equally powerful tooling.

ink! Alliance: Stewardship Beyond Code

As a member of the ink! Alliance, R0GUE played an instrumental role in supporting the ongoing stewardship of ink! (Polkadot's native PVM compatible Rust smart contract language), not only through development contributions, but through sustained operational, coordination, and ecosystem support.

Throughout the year, the ink! Alliance brought forward multiple treasury proposals (September, October, and November 2025) aimed at securing long-term funding to take ink! v6 to production readiness. While these proposals ultimately did not pass, the work behind ink! did not stop.

R0GUE stepped up.

Our contribution extended well beyond writing code. We supported the Alliance across:

• Operational coordination and continuity during periods of funding uncertainty
• Ecosystem communication, helping clarify ink!’s status, risks, and dependencies transparently
• Strategic alignment, ensuring ink! remained technically and conceptually aligned with PolkaVM, the Hub, and the broader Polkadot roadmap
• Developer-facing stewardship, including hands-on support, mentorship, and tooling integration

This kind of work is often invisible, but it is essential.

Open-source languages don’t sustain themselves on pull requests alone. They require teams willing to carry responsibility during uncertainty, maintain coherence across contributors, and protect long-term outcomes even when short-term funding doesn’t materialize. Coordination in a decentralised ecosystem is a critical component to ensure strategic alignment.

R0GUE was proud to do exactly that for ink!.

We remain deeply convinced of ink!’s importance as Polkadot’s Rust-native smart contract pathway, and we stand behind the work delivered by the Alliance in 2025. Stewardship is not conditional on easy wins, and this year proved that commitment matters.

We are again humbled and thankful to have been able to provide both development and stewardship support to ink!.

This work reflects our core belief that strong developer experience and empirically driven decision-making are essential to driving real ecosystem adoption, a view reinforced by the fact that Rust is onboarding developers 30% faster than Solidity across Web3.

Paseo: Reliability at the Core

Throughout 2025, R0GUE continued as a core contributor and maintainer of Paseo, Polkadot’s community testnet.

Paseo is critical infrastructure, and that means dedication and consistency matters more than visibility. This is the work that most do not see, but without a carefully managed and reliable testnet, the ability to innovate, ship new features and bring forth adoption becomes unfeasible.

This year, we supported:

• 30 teams actively building and testing on Paseo
• Up to 50 chains running at the same time
• Ongoing onboarding, debugging, and upgrade support
• A stable, predictable environment for ecosystem experimentation

It’s not on the mainstage of narrative and conversations. But without the dedication provided by core maintainers to ensure stability and management of Paseo's operations, little innovative progress would be possible.

Field Work: On the Ground With Builders

Beyond tooling and infrastructure, 2025 was about showing up, in person, on the ground, and in the midst of the innovative process.

R0GUE helped support the next generation of Polkadot developers by mentoring teams, answering hard technical questions, and helping projects move from concept to implementation.

In July 2025, we attended the Web3 Summit at Funkhaus Berlin, where we mentored builders working with ink! smart contracts. The momentum was clear: Rust-based ink! contracts led both interest and project submissions, outperforming Solidity-based approaches and reinforcing the growing shift toward Polkadot-native development.

In November 2025, we joined Sub0 Buenos Aires, mentoring teams at the Polkadot Builder Party hackathon. Once again, projects built with ink! stood out, with Web3 Foundation–selected winners disproportionately representing Rust-based ink! smart contract implementations based on the number of submissions.

Beyond events, we also got the opportunity to assist in long-term ecosystem education. As part of our ink! Alliance stewardship efforts, R0GUE sent a dedicated tutor to the Polkadot Blockchain Academy in Bali, supporting students directly in Rust and ink! smart contract development and helping build foundational skills for the next wave of Polkadot builders.

Across all of these efforts, our role remained consistent, we are:

• Builders
• Practitioners
• A team that ships and helps others ship

Because ecosystems are not built from slide decks, hype and narrative.

They are built by a strong community of engineers writing code, solving problems, and learning together.

Looking Ahead: 2026 and the Next Phase of R0GUE

If 2025 was the year of transformation, 2026, the Year of the Horse, is the year of acceleration; we are moving to a canter.

We are entering the next phase of R0GUE with a sharper operating model and a clear sense of purpose. Our services will continue to expand, intentionally, strengthening our ability to deliver end-to-end systems while preserving the technical depth that defines our work.

While blockchain and Web3 will remain our primary focus, we will continue advancing our AI partnerships and expanding delivery at the confluence of blockchain, AI, confidential compute, and trusted execution environments. The priority is building production-grade trust-minimised systems that solve real problems.

At the same time, we will deepen collaboration beyond Polkadot. While the ecosystem remains foundational to R0GUE’s DNA, 2026 will see us working more actively across multiple stacks and networks through partnerships and joint initiatives. Interoperability is not optional, it is how serious infrastructure and relationships get built.

Above all, 2026 is about fundamentals. Product design. Usability. Distribution. And shipping partner products to market.

2025 reforged R0GUE.

2026 is where we strike forward with clarity.

Go R0GUE