Polygon

Messari Podcast (00:00)
Hi everyone, I'm Matt Kreiser, research manager at Massari, joined here alongside Tori Samples, director of product at the Stellar Developments Foundation. Tori, welcome.

Tori Samples (00:08)
Thanks a lot, thanks for having me.

Messari Podcast (00:09)
Yeah, so today we're here to walk you guys through the Stellar financial ecosystem update. You may have seen it from Masari last week, but let's get into it. First off, we have stable coins. Really exciting, Tori. In November 2025, US Bank announced that it's testing custom issuance of its own stable coin on Stellar. Thoughts on this?

Tori Samples (00:28)
Yeah, we were so excited about this. We announced it with PWC and are thrilled to be able to talk about the fifth largest commercial bank in the US testing on Stuller. This is a reflection of momentum that we've had many years in the making as

A blockchain that has been around for over a decade that has over 99.9 % uptime and that is specifically geared towards asset issuance. When we were working with our partners, ⁓ well, anytime we're working with partners, especially in the commercial banking sphere, they really care about things like controls and security and compliance. And the fact that we're able to meet those absolute highest standards is just great.

Messari Podcast (01:14)
Yeah, 100%. I mean, we have the quote here from Mike Villano that the clawback feature was huge. And basically, for those of you who don't know, that just allows these issuers for regulatory compliant assets to be able to clawback ⁓ an asset they've issued if there's a compliance issue. So I don't know, is there anything more you can speak to or will we have to wait and see to hear more on this specifically with US Bank?

Tori Samples (01:36)
US Bank is a bit of a wait and see, but I will say that this is the moment for institutions. Financial institutions are coming on chain in 2026. We're glad that we were able to get a little bit of a teaser in 2025 with US Bank and we'll continue to move forward with that.

Messari Podcast (01:53)
100%. So moving forward here, we see that year over year till the end of 2025, stable coin market cap on Stellar was up 53 % year over year to 243, almost 244 million. was really driven by USDC and PYUSD. see most of this is USDC that's issued on Yeah, USDC increased by 44.5%. PYUSD launched on the network in September. Thoughts on USDC and PYUSD on Stellar.

Tori Samples (02:20)
Yeah, mean, USDC has been strong on Stuller for years, and we love that there's a natural market for that. We're also really excited about PayPal and our expansion with them.

PayPal is one of the largest providers in the world in this space. If you look at their transaction volume, the tens of millions of merchants that they have, I think about half a billion customers around the world. This is the way to get our mission into the real world. So if you look at our mission, which is to create equitable access to the global financial system, putting on-chain capability into systems like PayPal.

is the way to accomplish that for everyday people. And it's not just for consumers either. This also helps merchants. They can get access to real-time working capital issued in PYUSD. It also just makes settlement easier. I'll share, last week I was in Kenya and I had a request for someone, wanted me to pay them via PayPal.

And I was able to do that with my PYUSD. So I had PYUSD, and I was able to just seamlessly send that to them. It's such a small example, but something that would have been almost unfathomable five years ago. And it's amazing to see the momentum that is growing in this space.

Messari Podcast (03:37)
100%. Yeah, I love insight. where there's more infrastructure, like with PayPal, it's just a natural conduit for these users already in these ecosystems to use it. So that's great to hear you're experiencing that on the ground. Non-USD stable coins. How do you think about that adoption on Stellar? I know you're one of the few chains that's really invested in non-USD stable coins. Obviously haven't seen the adoption of USD stable coins, but would love to hear your vision on that.

You know, we see a little bit of adoption in terms of this Australian digital dollar, year C from Circle. Thoughts there.

Tori Samples (04:10)
Yeah, I think the most interesting things happening in this space are not reflected on this chart because it's local stable coins. So it's currencies that people already know and trust and use day to day coming on chain. And that's reflected in our work with EtherFuse. They've been some of the first to issue what we call stable bonds in Mexico and Brazil and soon around the world. And I think that the ultimate goal here is that people can access efficient on chain value.

Messari Podcast (04:14)
Okay. Yeah.

Tori Samples (04:37)
and markets to benefit them in their day-to-day lives. We are not opinionated that the dollar should rule the world or should be the only currency for trade or for savings or anything. people should be able to access any asset on chain. And the fact that Stellar was designed to do that from the beginning just makes it a perfect fit.

Messari Podcast (04:58)
Yeah, like this visa announcement too. In October 2025, visa announced support for USDC or CPYUSD, USDG on Stellar. You kind of pair that with this that they announced support for stablecoin settlement using those circle issued stablecoins. How do you think about that?

Tori Samples (05:16)
Yeah, so merchant payments are inherently inefficient. If you look at card payments around the world, there's so much value that is lost. Settlement time is an issue, and so it's a natural fit to put it on chain. And we're seeing more and more adoption of that around the world.

And again, it's a win-win. It benefits Visa, it benefits the merchants, it benefits the consumers who are able to pay. And so I think eventually we will get to a full settlement cycle on chain. And each of these building blocks, each of these announcements is an important step to that journey.

Messari Podcast (05:46)
Yeah, definitely. natural transition from those payments big one, Marshall Islands, the on-chain first a national government, universal basic income disbursement. news, obviously, What do we need to know there?

Tori Samples (06:00)
You would not believe how hard it is to get cash to a bunch of islands spread across the size of Mexico. It is incredibly difficult. And so the fact that this was able to happen in seconds on Stellar is just amazing. ⁓ The Marshall Islands is really a pioneer in this space. They have issued a sovereign token on Stellar, USDM-1.

And it's now being used for this universal basic income program, which is the majority of the country. And so these are everyday citizens that are accessing USDM-1 on phones through a wallet called Lumilow and being dispersed into literally the farthest reaches. able to use those tokens in their day-to-day life too. So they can go to a merchant and pay. And again, just becomes a very natural cycle end-to-end where people don't have to get caught up on the technology.

or the financial mechanisms, just feels like an easy way to get paid and to pay in their day-to-day lives.

Messari Podcast (07:01)
Yeah. Was there a lot of work on the backend? I'm curious just in how they implemented that. I know a number of years ago with strike and Bitcoin and El Salvador, there was, you know, reports about how that was challenging to implement with merchants. Was there a lot of infrastructure work that had to be done on the backend or what's the kind of the story behind that on the merchants being able to accept USDM one?

Tori Samples (07:20)
Yeah,

think that this is a bit of just a natural progression that we've seen in the industry and with regulation around the world and greater acceptance of blockchain based systems. But it's also really a credit to the government of the Marshall Islands. They are the ones who spearheaded this. And so it has come down from the very top. They've been bought in from the beginning. They were the ones who pioneered the whole project.

also helps that the regulatory structure is very clear. It's happening in a country that was already using USD. And so you don't have to worry about a lot of the challenges that come up day to day with acceptance on the ground. But then on the merchant side, the really nice thing about this wallet is that it's two sides of the same product for the people receiving universal basic income and then the merchants who are able to accept payments through that.

So again, just minimizes the technical complexity and gets people being paid and paying in their day-to-day lives.

Messari Podcast (08:15)
Right. And I didn't see any of this officially in the press, is there something you can say on why Marshall Islands government chose Stellar? I haven't seen anything and I'm curious if there was one key selling point.

Tori Samples (08:27)
Beyond the fact that it's incredibly cheap, fast and easy. Yeah, so we as the Stellar Development Foundation have been working directly with the team behind this we've been working with the government as well.

Messari Podcast (08:31)
Right, like you said before, there's points. I don't know if there was one that's like, yes, this, that would be insightful.

Tori Samples (08:46)
And I think it's been a very productive working relationship. All of the right ingredients are in place. And again, if you look at issuing assets, Stellar is best poised. Well, maybe I can't say best poised, but it's very well poised for that. And so it makes sense within the context of these large scale institutional public projects of our history in that space.

Messari Podcast (09:08)
Absolutely. Yeah. Now there's so many other areas of payments we could talk on, but I'm just curious for you, like quick hitting, what are some things top of mind for you besides this Marshall Islands that you want to touch on in terms of payments on Stellar?

Tori Samples (09:21)
So asset expansion is key to our 2026 strategy. just hit a billion dollars in RWA on chain, which is great. I'm sure we'll get into that. I think that that's key to the payments narrative as well. Because the more diversity you have on chain, the more you're able to do with that.

Messari Podcast (09:26)
Okay.

Yeah, I love you.

Tori Samples (09:46)
And so it's all of these pieces coming together, DeFi and RWA and payments that makes this an exciting time.

Messari Podcast (09:53)
Yeah, absolutely. So obviously this is through December 31st, RWA market cap on Stellar is up 196 % year over year to 890. Now just last week that crossed a billion. So huge accomplishment for Stellar. Obviously a lot of this historically has been driven by Benji, which represents one share of Franklin Templeton's on-chain U.S. government money fund. The remainder of the growths really come from a lot of new exciting RWA projects from issuers. Let's see.

SPICA, Red Swan, other fuse in a lot of different spaces, treasuries, real estate, sovereign stable bonds, like we talked about with them before. mean, talk more about that diversification expansion of RWAs on Stellar.

Tori Samples (10:32)
Yeah, so maybe another just fun little anecdote. We had our SDF holiday party in December in New York and the venue that we booked happened to be tokenized on Stellar through Red Swan. And I promise you, we did not choose it because of that, but we got there and said, wow, this is amazing. This is Stellar in the real world. And so it's just cool to see that, again, the things that seemed theoretical five, 10 years ago.

Messari Podcast (10:51)
That's all.

Yeah.

Tori Samples (11:01)
are now a lived experience. And I think that we'll see more and more of that. And we'll see more of that equitable access coming even in places like the US that are fairly well served by the formal financial system to let people access more and different assets on chain expand their own portfolio and then institutions to have that opportunity as well.

Messari Podcast (11:23)
Definitely. And I think the huge narrative to touch on here for Stellar is that DeFi composability, right? You touched on it earlier. It's that, hey, RWAs on Stellar, they're not just siloed to some permission set of investors. These are things that are, at least some of them, can really be for that promised blockchain utility.

and one of those is lending and borrowing. So I think it's an exciting announcement. have Templar coming online right now. You can lend and borrow. You can XLM to borrow USDC. this is going to expand to more assets like PYUSD, Benji, and then DRWA's VIA Centrifuge. That's like that clear example of what you're talking about, that real-world utility.

Tori Samples (12:11)
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, again, this is still a relatively new space for us. We just released our smart contracts platform in 2024. And if you look in 2025, we almost tripled in activity on network. And so it's really amazing to see what some early strong leaders like Blend have been doing and how they continue to build momentum and then what some of the newer products are doing to take that forward.

Messari Podcast (12:35)
Yeah, Stellar's DeFi TVL, like you said, almost tripled, 284 % year over year to 172, 173 million. Yeah, Blend was the 2025, no doubt. You can see that expansion right there in the that green. Blend, think it is unique in brings that DeFi together. You have other fused, so you have stable bonds, have these pools. And I think it's worth noting, for those of you who are interested in farming that yield,

Historically, the APYs on Blend have been well above competitors like Aavev 3 and Spark Blend on larger chains. So you guys are really setting an opportunity for more adoption to come over for those users who are willing to bridge funds.

Tori Samples (13:16)
Well, it's those users and it's the rest of the world. mean, the really amazing thing about Blend is that many of the Stellar native wallets have been able to integrate it. so people who are sitting in Bolivia facing a currency crisis or can't get access to USD equivalents anywhere in the world can put their money into a Stellar wallet, invest it and get a yield through Blend at those like crazy high rates and use that in their day-to-day lives because they can cash it out into their local

currency or they can pay a local merchant. And so I love that it's equitable from the beginning and it's compelling like at a financial level for almost anyone in the world.

Messari Podcast (13:55)
And let's talk about other Fuse too, because that's a big part of that story. They have their tokens on blend. So that's where that capital efficiency and DPI composability really comes that whole vision you just described.

Tori Samples (14:08)
Yeah, these are some of the most efficient markets in the world for getting in and out of stable coins, stable bonds. I Etherfuse is a pioneer in this space, started in Mexico, and now they've expanded to a number of countries. So we're really excited about the work that they're doing.

Messari Podcast (14:22)
Yeah, think Dave, I think I saw him, Dave Taylor, the founder of Otherfuse. I think he said like one basis it's the equivalent of like if you're doing real Forex ⁓ for an exchange, you're almost getting the same Obviously there's less liquidity now, but that's the whole reason we're here early is to see that adoption. And then, for retail users to have experience, it's like a 10 to 100x improvement for them financially. So that perfectly fits.

Stellar's mission.

you want to talk about, let's talk the DEXs, right? Because I think this is important for people to understand. There's the native DEX to Stellar, right? Stellar DEX. then, but we also have Sorbonne-based smart DEXs like SoraSwap. you help explain that for people so they understand it's kind of a unique situation on Stellar?

Tori Samples (15:10)
Yeah, I mean, think the Dex has been baked into Stellar Classic from the beginning and it's always been an outlier. And so in some ways, a smart contracts based Dex is almost like catching up to a model that other chains have had.

from the beginning. But it's meant to provide a lot more flexibility. You can come in and out of tokens really seamlessly. And so I think that, again, this is one step closer to bringing Stellar into a mental model that crypto users understand bring us to top of mind when people are thinking about trading different devite use cases.

Messari Podcast (15:28)
So.

Yeah, definitely. And one of those things that's going to be enabling that more is T-Rex. announcement we had token for regulated exchanges is an official proposal now. You guys can check it out on GitHub. is going to enable permission to exchange for regulatory compliant that might have requirements like KYC, AML, identity verification, investor accreditation, freezing, recovery, all of it.

it's going to enable DeFi composability. Can you talk about what the unlocks are going to be there the Stellar DeFi ecosystem?

Tori Samples (16:22)
Yeah, I mean, think that this just at like a very high level, this matches the patterns that we're seeing across the We want all crypto activity to be above board. And so all these things that we can do to make it feel like a safer environment and give people the comfort they need to transact is great. And so we're, I mean, we're excited about this. think it also dovetails with the work that we're doing.

privacy front and our institutional work. Again, it all comes together. And so this is going to be a very nice addition to our ecosystem.

Messari Podcast (16:55)
100%. And it's not just, you know, the proposals and governance, it's the technical updates as well, chain links coming in. they're going to be powering those data feeds, price feeds to make that, to support those RWAs and DeFi. Coming all the way to top. I think that's really it, Tory. That's the big picture, right? Huge stable point growth in 2025. It's going to keep going. You have the payments adoption. have real world, you have governments coming on and adopting Stellar, like the Marshall Islands.

RWAs up and to the right. And all of this is fitting in with the true ethos of crypto, which is that increased permissionlessness, increased defi composability. And there's even being an effort made there to make sure for traditionally regulated RWAs, how can we get those into the hands of everyday people around the world?

Tori Samples (17:42)
It's an exciting 2026. I briefly mentioned privacy as well, more to come on that. it's another big one that we're excited about this year, working with institutions, public sector organizations. We think that that's the next bridge in getting this mainstream and meeting the needs of every type of player along the way.

Messari Podcast (18:04)
Great. Well, thanks

for joining me, Tori, and thanks for listening, everyone. Financial Ecosystem Update, we published it last week. Check it you can expect more of these update videos moving all reports on Stellar Al-Masari. Thanks.

Tori Samples (18:16)
Thanks.