Inside Stellar’s Plan to Lead Crypto’s Next Chapter

All it took was one post from President Trump about more tariff pressure on China, and crypto took it on the chin.

But for all the altcoins that suffered in the wake of the selloff, it was interesting to see a few more mature names bounce back faster, including Stellar.

Stellar, which launched in 2014, has been mounting momentum and chasing solutions to the same problems many in the Ethereum ecosystem are chasing. But, according to Stellar Chief Product Officer Tomer Weller, Stellar is just as much on the forefront as anyone else — including Ethereum.

“We're tackling this. We think we have great ideas, and we're working with great partners in the ecosystem to make it happen. But anyone who tells you they have privacy completely figured out are, like, full of s—,” Weller Weller told Coinage.

That kind of honesty isn’t just refreshing — it speaks to where Stellar is positioning itself in crypto’s next phase. No longer just the blockchain for remittances or cross-border payments, Stellar is quietly becoming a hub for experimentation at the very frontier of crypto, Weller explains.

“Stellar is going to be, by the end of the year, the best place to experiment on in terms of cutting edge cryptography,” Weller said.

It’s a bold new direction for one of crypto’s oldest L1s, and it’s being driven in part by necessity. As the crypto industry shifts from retail speculation to institutional adoption, questions of privacy and compliance have moved from fringe topics to mandates. And according to Weller, Stellar is ready to meet the moment.

“Stellar has always been… a bridge between different financial services, right? It was never about being kind of like an island of, like, crypto anarchists,” Weller said. That practical ethos — focused more on utility than ideology — has quietly helped Stellar onboard millions of users around the world, particularly in places where crypto isn’t just speculation, but necessary for survival.

Take Argentina. Weller described a system where locals receive their paychecks in pesos, only to immediately convert them into more stable stores of value. “They're constantly dealing with hedging and they're constantly dealing with maintaining value,” he said. “If they get a paycheck in pesos, they will almost immediately transfer it or convert it to some other form of value that does not depreciate as quickly."

That context explains why Stellar’s integration with MoneyGram — to let users cash out USDC at more than 400,000 retail locations worldwide — is more than just partnership. It’s infrastructure for global financial access. And it’s just the beginning of what Stellar is aiming to support. Weller explains that there is a big push on Stellar now to expand stablecoin adoption far beyond the U.S. dollar.

“We're seeing on Stellar, [integrations with] Mexican peso stablecoins ... we're actually starting to see forex going on chain,” he said. “We're also starting to see various yield bearing assets, whether it's yield bearing stablecoins or bonds. There are some very exciting projects around that in Stellar in the space.”

As things scale, Weller says the project is in a much better position than others having not taken the more predictable path of launching an EVM clone.

“The tragedy of the EVM is that… we're like this whole EVM space is informed by decisions made hastily in like 2014,” he said. “There’s so many things about the design of EVM that we know is s—.”

So what does the next chapter look like? It’s not just about Stellar growing — it’s about shifting the industry. Weller believes stablecoins will continue to be a driving force of where crypto heads next, but it's not just about dollars sitting onchain. And as for the metric that Weller cares most about? It’s not total value locked. It’s velocity.

“If there's a big balance of just sitting there and doing nothing… it's probably not doing much for the world,” he said. “Velocity, I think, is a much better metric.”

It’s that focus on real-world movement — not just flashy numbers — that might just help Stellar continue to make noise in crypto as one of the stalwarts in the space.

After more than a decade of sticking to its mission, that’s proving to be a competitive advantage.

Coinage NFT holders can watch our full interview with Tomer Weller above. Coinage is a community-owned DAO letting our NFT holders become actual co-owners in one of the fastest-growing Web3 media outlets. Mint an NFT and become a member today to open a path to patronage dividends, or stake with us to support our project.