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Kaan hosts Yaman and Dennis from Trion Labs to introduce ZARF: a zero-knowledge protocol that lets users receive tokens via email addresses and claim them with Google login, keeping wallet identity private. The project exemplifies new use cases enabled by Stellar's X-Ray protocol upgrade.

Etherfuse founder Dave Taylor on why emerging markets need yield-bearing stablecoins denominated in local currencies. Tokenizing treasury bonds like Mexican CETES and Brazilian SELIC securities creates inherent yield without USD exposure or DeFi risk.

MoneyGram CEO Anthony Soohoo explains the strategic reasoning behind MGUSD, the company's native dollar-backed stablecoin on Stellar. Rather than treating stablecoins as trading assets, MoneyGram designed MGUSD as a platform for smart contract-based payments.

Stellar's RWA market cap exceeded $3 billion. This week's developer meeting features Gaian, a Southeast Asia payment infrastructure startup that uses USDC on Stellar to connect crypto wallets directly to local banking rails, enabling merchant payments and cross-border transfers that settle into real bank accounts. Gaian demonstrated their V2 API and self-serve onboarding dashboard.

Stellar's president Jose Fernandez da Ponte outlines why stablecoins have matured from speculative assets to payment infrastructure. Drawing on his PayPal blockchain experience, he identifies regulatory clarity, institutional interest, and real payment volume as drivers, plus composability as the technical foundation for RWA and enterprise adoption.

SozuPay and ArcusX, two InstaAwards recipients, demonstrated Stellar smart account infrastructure and non-custodial escrow. SozuPay handles organization payments with passkey authentication and compliance configuration; ArcusX provides a freelance platform with smart contract escrow and portfolio management.

Stellar showed up at Stable Summit 2026 in New York: SDF's Tomer Weller joined CoinDesk for a fireside on scaling institutional adoption, pointing to this year's RWA growth on Stellar and MoneyGram's newly launched MGUSD stablecoin as proof that institutional issuers are arriving.

Panel at Istanbul Blockchain Week examines institutional adoption of blockchain for cross-border payments. Key barrier: integrating new infrastructure with legacy systems at scale. Market makers discuss capital fragmentation, payment companies reveal treasury challenges, and infrastructure providers show how stablecoins solve operational pain.

A panel of fintech and financial leaders discusses how regulatory clarity, stablecoins, and tokenized securities are accelerating institutional adoption. While the Clarity Act and SEC rulemaking may take 12-18 months, institutions are shipping products now under existing law.

MoneyGram CEO Anthony Suhu discusses the company's pivot to stablecoin rails. The global payments giant announced a partnership with Kraken allowing users to move crypto to fiat via MoneyGram's 500,000 locations in ~100 countries, powered by USDC.

MoneyGram launches MGUSD stablecoin on Stellar, enabling self-custody for its 60M global customers. CEO Anthony Sohu and MZero's Luca Prosperi discuss the infrastructure strategy behind the modernization: unified payment rails, modular architecture with Bridge and Fireblock partnerships, and how instant 24/7/365 settlement reduces costs.

Aid organizations in sanctioned regions use stablecoins to bypass broken financial infrastructure. OSUM pays Syrian hospital staff via Digibank's digital wallet and Stellar's bulk payment tool, cutting costs to 2% and delivery from months to minutes.