Tomer, Stellar's Chief Product Officer, discusses the foundation's core strategy: real-world financial access through products, partnerships, and infrastructure. Key topics: Freighter wallet, Soroban smart contracts, MoneyGram's anchor network (400,000 agents), cash-to-DeFi yield flows, and why the DTCC partnership on RWA tokenization represents institutional adoption.
Tomer, Chief of Product at the Stellar Development Foundation, walks through Stellar's approach to financial inclusion. Unlike crypto networks that started with utopian ideals of rewiring finance, Stellar began with a mission: equitable access to the world's financial system. He covers the core product layers: Freighter (non-custodial wallet), Soroban (smart contracts platform added years after launch), and Blend (lending protocol). The anchor network (exemplified by MoneyGram's 400,000 agents worldwide) creates direct cash onramps—a user deposits cash at a MoneyGram location and immediately accesses USDC on Stellar. The cash-to-DeFi flow means depositing cash, moving it into a Blend lending pool, and earning yield in markets where traditional returns are hard to find. The discussion closes on real-world assets (RWAs): assets tokenized on blockchain with value outside the crypto economy (treasuries, equities, securities). Stellar's partnership with DTCC to enable RWA tokenization signals institutional adoption and on-chain settlement infrastructure becoming competitive with traditional infrastructure.
