Built at NEAR HACKATHON · Track 03: Privacy & Private AI · November 2026 · Try the live prototype
Product · the daily look
Ostrich: one number to look at every day.
A personal finance app for 1 billion of the world’s poorest women to grow their net worth.
A personal finance tool for women (and men) who are struggling with money: when retirement feels hopeless, kids are expensive, and future jobs are uncertain.
Problem
Sometimes it's so overwhelming, we'd rather not look.
Solution
Looking is a habit, like the gym. Seeing it every day helps us stop bad habits over time. Avoiding it is what lets them last.
Ostrich
One number a day: your net worth, what you own minus what you owe. Secured by private AI, so your secrets stay yours.
It is 7:40 on a Tuesday. Before work, she opens Ostrich for the first time in weeks.
Her number is −$15,540.
The Ostrich app tells her: you looked, and that was the hardest part.
When a problem isn't defined, it's very hard to solve. Once it is, there are always ten ways to solve it, especially with AI.
Sample member: made up, not a real person. Her number is the app's demo data.
The main problem: what Ostrich solves every day
You can't change what you don't see.
Researchers call it the ostrich effect. But real ostriches don't bury their heads; they lower them to turn their eggs.
37%
of Americans aged 18 to 29 avoid thinking about money when they are stressed
42%
of ages 18 to 29 live paycheck to paycheck
$1.263T
owed on US credit cards at the end of Q2 2026
The numbers are scattered across banks, cards, loans, brokerages and wallets, and looking can feel shameful. So, many people look away. The tools that exist assume she already has money, or knows to go looking.
Sources: Bank of America Better Money Habits 2026 (via InvestmentNews); New York Fed household debt report, Q2 2026.
In the live prototype today
Three numbers, one calm look, and nothing leaves your phone.
Type cash, what you owe and what you've invested, or read a real NEAR account's balance. See your number with no red or green and no streaks. Every visit ends the same way: You looked.
The daily look: your number, how you felt before, and how you feel now.Three numbers: a rough guess is fine. Or read a real NEAR account's balance, read only.What was sent? It shows exactly what left your device. Usually: nothing.
Members' net worth by 2056 if 1 in 4 of the 54.8M members we forecast save like her, in today's US dollars.
$42k
Her net worth after 30 years with Ostrich, saving $63 a month on a $15,080 minimum-wage salary and keeping Medicaid. The same $63 a month saved without investing: $22,620.
5.5M
People new to crypto and onchain savings, like NEAR, if 1 in 10 members try the savings ladder, with every risk said plainly.
Sample member: made up, not a real person. A scenario, not a promise; today's dollars; middle case. Ostrich never holds or moves this money and earns nothing from it. Not financial advice.
Retirement
Ostrich lets people, even on minimum wage, picture a retirement where she can afford the basics.
On minimum wage, from $0: about $42,000 in today's dollars
Solid line: middle case, a third each in an S&P 500 fund, stablecoin DeFi and a REIT fund. Shaded: low and high cases. Dashed: saved without investing.
Sample member, made up, not a real person. Returns after inflation are assumptions (S&P 500 5%, DeFi 4%, REIT 4.5%), below 1972 to 2025 history; DeFi at 4% is the optimistic part. With card debt, paying it off comes first; she starts at $0. Not financial advice.
When is retirement within reach?
If she keeps going from 21 to 71: her future paycheck beats her pay, but not yet her costs.
Replaces her pay: 144%
Passes. Even at 83% of benefits after 2034, about $18,800.
Keeps her standard of living
Likely, since Social Security is most of her income.
Covers basic costs: 64%
Short about $12,300 a year. Rent and place matter most.
The biggest lever is when she claims: Social Security at 70 pays about 77% more a month than at 62.
Sample member, made up, not a real person, today's dollars, rough estimates. Sources: SSA benefit formula; 2026 Trustees (CRS); Morningstar 2026 (3.9%); Elder Index 2025, UMass Boston; CRR Boston College. Not financial advice.
Closing the gap
Four levers that get her future paycheck to basic costs.
What changes (Social Security claimed at 70 in every row)
Future paycheck a year
Covers $34,000 basic costs
Today's plan: $7.25 an hour, saves 5%
$21,700
64%
1. Save 10% instead of 5%
$26,500
78%
2. Save 6%, take a 50% employer match and the new federal Saver's Match (from 2027)
$28,400
84%
3. Earn $15 an hour, as many state minimums do, and save 5%
$33,900
100%
4. Own a home outright by 70: basic costs fall to about $25,200
$28,400 with lever 2
113% of the lower costs
Inflation is already counted
$21,700 means $21,700 of today's buying power. In 2076 prices, at 2.5% inflation a year, that's about $74,000, and $34,000 of basic costs becomes about $117,000. Social Security rises with prices every year by law (2.8% in 2026).
How daily snacks pull these levers Planned
Wage matters most. Job snacks build the habit of applying while she still works, one small step a day, until $7.25 becomes $15. In a randomized trial, writing a job-search plan raised job offers about 30%.
Housing is next. Owning a home outright cuts basic costs by about a quarter. Saver's Match is free federal money many won't know they qualify for.
Sample member, made up, not a real person, rough estimates. Sources: SSA formula; SECURE 2.0 Saver's Match; Elder Index, UMass Boston; SSA 2026 COLA; Faberman, Mueller, Şahin and Topa (Econometrica); Abel and others (AEJ Applied, 2019). Not financial advice.
Why it works
One goal, her net worth going up, and two advantages that grow with every member.
A reason to trust us
We never earn from what lowers her net worth.
No cash advances, payday-style loans or card offers. Other money apps can't easily say that, because those are their revenue.
A reason membership gets better Planned
It gets smarter as more people try more things.
Members see what happened to people like them, and nobody can pay to be listed. The advantage grows with every member.
ClassPass for wealth management
One membership fee gives members access to financial services, the way ClassPass opens gyms and yoga studios. Ostrich keeps 13%; the rest pays the partners who help her. Nobody pays to be listed.
Membership partners are Planned. Sharing results is opt-in, totals only and anonymous. Not financial advice.
Why I made this
I made this because my life is already complicated enough.
Angel investments on Carta and other dashboards
A mortgage and rental income
Several LLCs, each with its own bank accounts
Stock options from a past job, a 401(k) and an IRA
Medicaid, with income limits to keep
20 crypto wallets and 50 DeFi and liquidity positions, some rolled up in vfat where even the wallet can't see them
On top of everyday bank accounts and credit cards
Problem
Ask me my net worth today, and finding the numbers feels as painful as the tax filing I do once a year.
Solution
Integrations that read and never write. Not writing protects the assets; reading gives me visibility, control and insight to improve my habits.
Ostrich
Plaid and others already move the data, so Ostrich isn't the pipeline or the aggregator. Ostrich's one job stays the same: help you focus on your one number, and let you decide how to move it up.
The second problem
Privacy: money is the thing we least want anyone to see.
Sharing those seven lines about myself raises my hair and gives me a small panic.
I'm scared someone could steal my money if I tell them, or find out some other way.
Talking about money isn't natural. I don't ask friends their salaries, and even my crypto friends stay vague about their gains.
Arguments about money are one of the strongest predictors of divorce, even between people meant to share a life (Dew, Britt and Huston, 2012).
Neither my parents nor my school taught me how to grow my net worth or climb out of rock bottom.
Problem
Privacy is a historical and social problem, not only a technical one. The default answer is to pretend it isn't there: cover your eyes, or make it so messy that even people give up looking.
Solution
Private AI. That's why Ostrich is at the NEAR hackathon.
Ostrich
Privacy for millions, even billions, of "regular Marys" who are far from cybersecurity and wouldn't know they need it, yet practise it every time they don't talk about money.
This is why private AI is so helpful, and so exciting, for personal finance.
The third problem
Most financial tools are priced for people who already have money.
The top 1% (or 10%) has family offices, wealth advisers, estate lawyers, private funds, private credit, angel deals, tax strategies, and dashboards like Monarch, Kubera and Empower.
"Regular Mary" is told to hold the S&P 500; if she's sophisticated, Bitcoin and a rental property too.
Everyone else is barely staying afloat, paycheck to paycheck, with no room to move for a better job.
Some families can't afford a funeral, and neither can the people they leave behind.
Problem
Walk into a wealth manager's office and you feel you're in the wrong place: not enough zeros, not a serious customer. They won't work with negative net worth.
Solution
The 1%'s playbook is on the internet, and now in AI. The new problem is unknown unknowns: you can't search for what you don't know exists.
Ostrich
The daily look, plus a snack, a short daily suggestion that might raise your net worth; and Ostrich TV (planned), talks on growing net worth by guest speakers.
Ostrich is for the 99%.
User journey: designing the ending to each session with closure, empowerment, calmness, and hope
How every visit ends: on her action, then the refrain.
Visit
Its question
How it ends
Daily look
Where am I?
"You looked." The refrain.
Snack
Why does this happen?
Her own small step, in her words
Ostrich TV lessonPlanned
What did someone else do?
A line to keep, then a stopping point
YearPlanned
Who was I this year?
The book of her year, in her words
Protect the refrain
"You looked." never changes. Nothing added, never varied to keep it fresh, and nothing after it except a quiet fresh-start line on a landmark she chose.
Cut
Anything shaped like "coming up next", a progress bar at the end of a visit, "2 lessons away from…", a notification teasing the next reading.
People remember an experience mostly by its peak and its end (Kahneman and colleagues, 1993). Cliffhangers buy less than they seem: a 2025 meta-analysis found no general memory advantage for unfinished tasks.
User journey design: Ostrich helps her tell her own story about money Planned
Momentum without hooks: fresh starts, small wins, good endings.
Fresh starts
"A fresh start, if you want one."
She picks her landmarks: her birthday, the new year, a change she reports. She names the new chapter herself; the last one stays as it was.
People start goals more often at landmarks like these (Dai, Milkman and Riis, Management Science, 2014).
Small wins
"I called about the late fee."
One optional check-in question: anything she did for her money, however small. Her words stay on her phone and never reach the AI.
Visible progress was the biggest daily motivator in about 12,000 work diary entries (Amabile and Kramer, 2011). The quoted win is from the sample member: made up.
Never: streaks, counts, scores, cliffhangers, countdowns or reminders. Every visit still ends on "You looked."
Technology architecture
How every account becomes one number, privately.
Where money lives
Banks, cards and loans (Plaid); Ethereum-style wallets (Zerion); NEAR accounts (public NEAR RPC); and anything typed in by hand.
Ostrich server
Server routes hold the keys, never the browser. Stores nothing: balances pass through.
On her device
One format for every source. Net worth = assets minus debts. A daily snapshot. Feelings, notes and story never leave. No Ostrich database, no login.
Private AI
NEAR AI Cloud runs in a trusted execution environment. It gets totals only and returns one calm sentence.
This is the planned build. The live prototype runs the on-device part today, plus a real read-only NEAR account read. The bank connections and private AI are concept screens. Plaid and Zerion see the accounts or addresses they serve; wallet addresses are public onchain.
Technology · The NEAR ecosystem Planned
Seven of the 17 hackathon ecosystem projects help Ostrich read and reason privately.
NEAR AI Cloud
Private AI in Intel TDX and NVIDIA GPU enclaves. For Ostrich: the daily sentence, with proof she can check and a signed reply.
OutLayer
Code runs in a TDX enclave; each result is attested to the exact code and inputs. For Ostrich: add up totals with keys sealed inside.
HOT Kit, from HOT
Connects wallets on NEAR, EVM, Solana, TON, Stellar, TRON and Cosmos, and reads balances. For Ostrich: one connect button, read only.
NEAR Intents
Cross-chain swaps; balances held in a verifier contract; a token list with USD prices. For Ostrich: prices (used today), and Intents balances in the number.
Aurora
An Ethereum-style chain that runs on NEAR. For Ostrich: Aurora wallets join the Ethereum-style connector.
Rhea
NEAR trading and lending, from Ref and Burrow. For Ostrich: deposits count as assets, and loans as debts.
HEX
HOT's exchange, built on HOT Bridge and NEAR Intents. For Ostrich: HOT Omni balances counted; swaps stay in HEX.
The rule for all 17
Read, never move money. Ostrich uses only the reading part of each; swaps, bridges and signing stay off.
From each project's docs and GitHub where reachable, Nov 8, 2026. All connections Planned, except the NEAR Intents price list, which the prototype uses today.
Technology · Open source for crypto and DeFi Planned
Open tools let Ostrich read Aave, Morpho and any wallet straight from the source.
Aave
AaveKit GraphQL API, plus the Pool contract's account data: collateral, debt and health factor. For Ostrich: Aave loans count as debts.
Morpho
Public REST API for vault and market positions and APY. For Ostrich: vault savings in the number.
MetaMask Connect
Replaces the now-deprecated MetaMask SDK. For Ostrich: share an address to read. Never ask for a signature.
viem (MIT)
Read-only contract calls and batched reads, with no wallet and no gas. For Ostrich: read balances and loans straight from the chain.
DefiLlama
Open-source adapters and a free API for yields, borrow rates and TVL. For Ostrich: neutral rates on DeFi rungs.
Revoke.cash (MIT)
Shows which apps can spend a wallet's tokens. For Ostrich: list approvals in plain words and link out. Ostrich never revokes for her.
rotki
Local-first crypto tracker: read-only keys, data in an encrypted local database. For Ostrich: a model to follow.
OpenZeppelin Contracts (MIT)
The most-used audited library for smart contracts. Only if Ostrich ever writes a contract.
Safe Smart Account (LGPL-3.0)
The multisig behind many Ethereum treasuries. An option for the donor fund, next to NEAR Business, Trezu and SputnikDAO.
Ghostfolio (AGPL-3.0)
Open-source wealth tracker. Learn from it, don't copy code: AGPL would require sharing Ostrich's source.
Same rule
Read, never move money. Each tool is used only for reading; anything that signs or sends stays off.
From each project's docs and GitHub, Nov 8, 2026. APIs are free to read today; terms can change. Not legal advice; check licenses with a lawyer before shipping.
Technology architecture, with the ecosystem Planned
Read everything, add it up in a sealed box, and let her check the proof.
Read, never sign
Plaid for banks, cards and loans; HOT Kit and FastNEAR RPC for wallets on many chains; Aurora by Ethereum RPC; Rhea deposits and loans; NEAR Intents balances. Mortgage and BNPL typed in, staying on the device.
Add up, sealed
An OutLayer enclave keeps bank and wallet keys sealed inside, adds up assets and debts, and gives proof of the exact code that ran. Prices from the NEAR Intents token list and a TEE price oracle.
On her device
The daily snapshot and things with a date. Feelings and story never leave.
Private AI
NEAR AI Cloud gets totals only, with proof of sealed hardware and a signed one-sentence reply. At login: one number, one sentence, and a Verify line.
Later, a way to give: anyone (a person, a foundation, a company) can pay for a membership for someone who can't afford one. Ostrich keeps none of it; all of it pays the partners who help her. The money waits in a shared wallet donors can check, and nothing leaves without several people approving (NEAR Business, Trezu or SputnikDAO). Not Ostrich revenue, and never members' own money.
Product design: what research says about how Ostrich is designed
One view helps, proof builds trust, hype hurts.
Connection
Research
What changes for her
One view of every account
In Iceland, after an aggregator app launched, bank overdraft (NSF) fees fell 14% in a year and 38% in two, with no alerts (Carlin, Olafsson and Pagel, Review of Finance 2023).
More chains in one calm number. Still no alerts.
Same app, the ostrich effect
People logged in less when overdrawn and more on payday; one more login a month went with about 17% less consumer debt (Olafsson and Pagel, NBER).
A negative number gets the same calm screen. A link, not proof.
Proof of privacy
When privacy ratings were shown clearly, 47% bought from high-privacy sites versus 6%, and paid about 59 cents more (Tsai, Egelman, Cranor and Acquisti, Carnegie Mellon, 2011).
A plain "Verified private" line she can tap.
Memecoins and mining rewards
Lottery-like stocks draw lower-income investors, who earn 2 to 3% less a year (Kumar, 2009). Attention-driven app trading predicted -4.7% returns in 20 days (Barber and others, 2022).
Counted, never promoted. No buy buttons, no streaks.
A donor treasury
When donors were told overhead was covered, donations rose about 75% versus seed money (Gneezy, Keenan and Gneezy, Science 2014).
100% to partners, in a treasury donors can audit. Members stay private.
Journal of Finance (Kumar 2009; Barber, Huang, Odean and Schwarz 2022); Information Systems Research (Tsai and others 2011).
Business model · 50 years
A business model for 50 years: $116M of revenue a year by 2076, while members' net worth grows to about $876B.
Ostrich never touches or manages that money. But that many members, growing their net worth together, is a strong voice when negotiating with fintech partners for better terms that help them grow it faster.
All members
2056 54.8M2076 81.4M
Range in 2076: 41M to 163M
Most stay free: the daily look is free forever.
Paid members
2056 4.7M2076 7.0M
Range in 2076: 3.5M to 14M
Plus or Pro, Ostrich TV, or a seat from her employer. About 1 in 11.
Ostrich revenue a year
2056 $78M2076 $116M
Range in 2076: $58M to $231M
Employers, memberships, group deals and partners. Ostrich TV is not counted: Ostrich takes no profit from it.
Savers’ net worth
2056 $214B2076 $876B
Range in 2076: $556B to $1.4T
The 1 in 4 members who save like the sample member, from the year they join. It stays theirs.
Sample member: made up, not a real person. A scenario, not a promise. Base case; ranges are low and high cases. After 2056 everything grows 2% a year, an assumption. Today's dollars.
Global expansion · A 100-year plan
$16.2T of net worth for 3.4B members, including the poorest people on earth, with $546.7M of operating income on $2.9B of revenue in 2126.
Year
Members
Paid members†
Member-owners
Revenue
Costs
Operating income
Members' net worth*
2036
16.5M
1.2M
0.09M
$25M
$26M
−$0.8M
$10B
2056
271M
15.2M
6.8M
$238M
$191M
$47.0M
$0.7T
2076
776M
38.2M
19.7M
$661M
$536M
$124.7M
$3.9T
2086
1.04B
51.3M
30.1M
$888M
$721M
$167.6M
$7.2T
2096
1.40B
68.9M
42.6M
$1.19B
$968M
$225.2M
$8.9T
2106
1.88B
92.7M
58.6M
$1.60B
$1.30B
$302.7M
$10.6T
2116
2.53B
124.5M
79.5M
$2.16B
$1.75B
$406.8M
$13.9T
2126
3.40B
167.4M
107.4M
$2.90B
$2.35B
$546.7M
$16.2T
Base case for comparison, 2126: 219M members, $311M revenue, $44.5M operating income, $1.13T members' net worth. Over 100 years the roadmap brings about $87.7B of revenue and $16.1B of operating income.
† Plus, TV and group deals; Feathers members are counted apart (284M in 2126). * Includes the zero-interest fund and Feathers savings; each member counted for at most 50 years. To 2076 from the forecast, then 3% a year. Today's dollars; every number is an assumption.
Behind the 100-year plan · how we get there
One profitable timeline pays for the mission, while members slowly buy out the investors.
Each problem became its own timeline
Revenue-driven, from 2027
Problem: the base case reaches 81.4M users by 2076, but we want to reach a billion users (12x the base case). So, three phases, profitable on its own every year from 2037:
2027: members tell friends (no ads) and prove it raises net worth
2036: local versions in each country; employers and credit unions offer it
2046: it reads money outside banks, like mobile money
Mission-driven, from 2061
Problem: to reach a billion users, Ostrich focuses on the world's poorest women. Many lack a smartphone or steady internet, rely on husbands and fathers for access to their own money, and one small disaster can wipe out everything she has. Solution: a 0% fund for small disasters, and Feathers, a cheaper membership ($6 to $18 a year) that brings her the investment tools and information of the wealthiest countries. Ostrich stays cash-flow positive, with no charity or foreign aid.
Who owns it, and when
Fundraising: $16.5M in three rounds
2027: $4.5M
2029: $8M
2031: $4M
Valued at the higher of $20M or 3x revenue. Best fit: impact investors, foundations and family offices.
Co-op membership
Ostrich starts as a company with a public mission (a Delaware PBC), and becomes a co-op, owned by its members, between 2038 and 2041.
Any paying member can buy a $200 share. From 2030, each share has a vote.
While she owns it, she gets a share of the profit. If she leaves, she gets back what she paid.
When investors exit
Investors don't own Ostrich forever. From 2038 to 2043, Ostrich buys back a sixth of their shares each year at that year's price, mostly with money from members buying shares. Members own about 61% of Ostrich by 2041, and 86% by 2056.
Returns, held to 2076
Base case
Roadmap
$200 stake bought 2030
10.3x, 8.1%
25.0x, 10.2%
Bought 2040
3.5x, 6.1%
4.3x, 5.6%
Bought 2050
1.9x, 3.5%
1.8x, 2.6%
Investors' $16.5M
$45.5M: 2.8x, 9.0%
$81.2M: 4.9x, 14.4%
MOIC, then IRR a year. Member stakes include her share of the surplus and Ostrich TV. Early buyers gain most; later buyers pay a higher price.
Illustrative only: not an offer of shares or a promise of returns. Ostrich offers no ownership until a lawyer has set up the shares. Today's dollars; every number is an assumption from the forecast's Roadmap and Mission case tabs. Not financial or legal advice.
Just fantasizing: if Ostrich becomes a hackathon sponsor
The Ostrich Calm Kit: everything a team needs to build kind, private money tools in a weekend.
1. Calm screen components
Open-source React pieces: number first, Hide amounts, a quiet status line, no red, and a negative number that looks as calm as a positive one.
2. Demo households
Twelve made-up people, from -$15,540 to a minimum-wage saver, as JSON. Builders never need anyone's real data.
3. Read-only connector kit
The Connector SDK with examples for NEAR and Ethereum wallets. Nothing in it can sign or send.
4. Totals-only private AI
One function that sends only totals to NEAR AI Cloud and returns the sentence plus a "What was sent" record.
5. Research registry as data
Every finding with its source and evidence label, as open JSON, plus the snack format.
6. Four prize tracks
A calm screen for a negative number; a read-only connector; a research-backed snack; a privacy proof members can check.
After the weekend
Finalists who keep shipping get mentoring and a small "keep building" grant at 30 and 90 days, and reviewed work can appear in Ostrich with credit.
Judging would include the Ostrich rules: no real member data, read only, totals only to AI, sources cited. All Planned.
