Truflation

Table of Contents

Stefan Rust founded Truflation in July 2021, fresh off his run as CEO of Bitcoin.com. The thesis was simple. The consumer price index is the most consequential economic series in the world, and it relies on opaque government surveys with month-long lags. Truflation set out to publish a censorship-resistant inflation index instead, built from millions of real, verifiable price points and refreshed daily on-chain.

The thesis quickly outgrew its first product. By 2024 the team was rebuilding the underlying data layer as TRUF.NETWORK, a SQL-native blockchain purpose-built for verifiable economic data. Holdex has been part of the build through both chapters, embedded inside the team and shipping the application layer end-to-end.

Co-building the application layer

Holdex's footprint at Truflation sits inside the application layer itself. Mark Curchin leads product management on the Truflation side, backed by a Holdex engineering squad covering product, backend, frontend, SDK, explorer, and developer tooling on top of TRUF.NETWORK's consensus engine.

The TRUF.NETWORK consensus engine itself was acquired from Kwil in April 2025, including its decentralised PostgreSQL database, the Kuneiform SQL-smart-contract language, and the Roadrunner consensus protocol. Kwil's core engineers continue to maintain that layer. Everything that visitors and developers actually interact with (the explorer, the front-ends, the SDKs, the smart contracts, the data-provider tooling, the developer-relations content) is the Holdex-shaped half of the system.

The story so far

The first chapter was the inflation index. Truflation launched on Chainlink in April 2022, publishing a daily on-chain US CPI alternative built from millions of price points. By May 2022 the seed round had closed, with Fundamental Labs, Balaji Srinivasan, Chainlink, C² Ventures, the Israeli Blockchain Association, and Cogitent Ventures on the cap table. The same year the team joined the Chainlink BUILD program and announced an early partnership with Kwil to decentralise the underlying database.

The second chapter was the network. By February 2024 the team had pulled together a $6M Series A led by Coinbase Ventures' Base Ecosystem Fund (Truflation was one of the first six investments selected from over 800 applications), joined by Modular Capital, Four Seasons Ventures, Laser Digital, Red Beard Ventures, and Abra. The TRUF token went live in April 2024, with cross-chain transfers via Chainlink CCIP shortly after. By late 2024 the strategy had broadened. TRUF.NETWORK was no longer the inflation index alone, but the underlying SQL-native blockchain for all kinds of verifiable economic data.

That broader thesis got its hard structural validation in April 2025, when Truflation acquired and open-sourced Kwil's decentralised PostgreSQL database and SQL-smart-contract platform. The rebrand to TRUF.NETWORK landed the same month. What followed was "100 Days of TRUF," a summer of shipping that landed Trufscan, the PCE index on-chain, Solana support, integrations with Robinhood, Bitstamp, Limitless Exchange, Kalshi, WeatherXM, and Raydium, and a one-click TRUF Node on AWS Marketplace.

By April 2026, Stefan Rust's "Next Chapter" announcement formalised what had become true through the Kwil acquisition. TRUF.NETWORK was now the full-stack data settlement layer, and the inflation index was one of many products on top of it. Holdex was inside every chapter.

Products

Truflation.com

Truflation.com is the flagship product. A daily on-chain US CPI alternative, refreshed from millions of price points across retailers and marketplaces. It launched on Chainlink in April 2022 as the original censorship-resistant inflation index and became the public face of the network for traders, analysts, and DeFi protocols that need a real-time inflation print they can verify.

The truflation.com frontend is owned end-to-end by Holdex engineers.

Predictions

Predictions is the first decentralised prediction market for economic data, built on top of TRUF.NETWORK. Markets settle on macroeconomic releases like CPI, NFP, and PCE using the same verifiable on-chain data the rest of the network depends on. Accuracy against the BLS reference series sits in the high 99.9% range.

Holdex shipped the prediction-market UI and the index/oracle integration that connects market settlement back to on-chain data.

TRUF.NETWORK

TRUF.NETWORK is the substrate underneath everything else, a SQL-native blockchain purpose-built for verifiable economic data. The consensus engine, decentralised PostgreSQL database, and SQL-smart-contract language came from the Kwil acquisition in April 2025. Network creation runs back to early 2024, the TRUF token TGE was in April 2024, and the formal rebrand to TRUF.NETWORK landed in April 2025.

Holdex builds the application layer that sits on top of the Kwil-derived consensus engine, including frontends, SDKs, the explorer, smart contracts, and the data-provider tooling.

TN MCP

TN MCP is a Model Context Protocol server that gives AI agents direct query access to verified economic data on TRUF.NETWORK. It open-sourced in August 2025 and is the first AI-native interface to the network.

Holdex contributed to the MCP server's design and engineering.

TN Open Source SDK

The TN Open Source SDK is the developer toolkit (Go and JavaScript) for building and deploying SQL smart contracts on TRUF.NETWORK. It powers partner integrations like Robinhood, Bitstamp, Limitless Exchange, and Raydium.

Holdex leads SDK engineering, co-built with Usher Labs.

Trufscan

Trufscan is the data and transaction explorer for on-chain activity. It launched in 2025 alongside the TRUF.NETWORK rebrand and is the canonical place to inspect verified data submissions, contract executions, and network state.

Trufscan is 100% Holdex-built. The only contributors on the public repo are Holdex engineers.

TN Node

TN Node is the node-operator software for participating in TRUF.NETWORK consensus. A one-click TRUF Node became available on AWS Marketplace in November 2025, lowering the bar for new operators.

Holdex runs nodes on the network and contributed to the node-operator documentation and tooling.

Data network

Metric	Snapshot
Combined data sources	1M+
Tradable indexes	210+
Capital raised	$6M Series A (Feb 2024), seed (May 2022)
Backers	Coinbase Ventures, Chainlink, Fundamental Labs, Balaji Srinivasan, C² Ventures, Modular Capital, Laser Digital
Live integrations	Robinhood, Bitstamp, Limitless Exchange, Kalshi, WeatherXM, Raydium, AWS Marketplace

In Holdex's words

"By the time data hits most blockchains, it's already stale for a high-frequency trading bot or a real-time AI agent. What excites me is seeing TRUF turn data into a marketplace where accuracy wins and bad data is naturally pushed out."— Holdex

The arc is clear: Truflation started with inflation data, became a network for verifiable economic data, and then turned that network into a developer and AI surface. Holdex's role is the application layer that makes the data usable by traders, protocols, developers, and agents.