At Meridian 2026, Ascend Markets goes live as the first regulated on-chain prime brokerage on Stellar mainnet, completing eight institutional repo transactions with State Street, WisdomTree, and Franklin Templeton. Simultaneously, Figure expands YLDS, its regulated yield-bearing stablecoin, as the foundation of an institutional real-world-asset marketplace.
Meridian 2026 featured a major breakthrough in institutional adoption: Ascend Markets announced the first-ever on-chain prime brokerage operating live on Stellar mainnet. The company completed eight live repurchase transactions, a first for any blockchain, using institutional partnerships and SEC approval. Trading partners include State Street, WisdomTree, and Franklin Templeton, with Chainlink data feeds providing oracle pricing. Ascend launched with $100M in liquidity and plans to expand into margin lending, stock loans, and commodity derivatives, operating 24/7 globally on-chain. In parallel, Figure Markets, America's largest non-bank HELOC lender, is scaling its institutional marketplace on Stellar through YLDS, a regulated yield-bearing stablecoin. YLDS can be transferred like a standard stablecoin while earning SOFR minus 35 basis points (360 bps annually), funded by Figure's origination and securitization infrastructure. The company is strategically deploying YLDS to other blockchains to build liquidity pipelines for its broader real-world-asset marketplace.
