Five Stellar RWA ideas, and the companies they should become.
Ballast is the weight in a ship's hull that lets it carry a load without tipping over. Stellar holds about $4B of tokenized real-world assets that just sit there. Only about $2M is used in Blend and about $8.4M in Templar (SDF Dune dashboard; RedStone, 2026-08). These ideas turn that idle weight into something that moves money.
Two ideas are not here: idea 4 (compliance-preserving RWA bridging) and idea 6 (DTCC readiness) are out of scope for this repo.
The build plan for Ballast is PRD.md.
Source research: the three Stellar RWA diligence runs dated 2026-09-16. Figures are cited in each idea file.
| # | Idea | File |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Collateral rail for anchors: pledge tokenized T-bills / MMFs for corridor prefunding and FX lines | ideas/1-collateral-rail.md |
| 2 | Intraday DvP repo: tokenized Treasuries against USDC, one atomic contract | ideas/2-intraday-repo.md |
| 3 | Instant exit: RWA token to USDC or local stablecoin at corridor endpoints | ideas/3-instant-exit.md |
| 5 | LATAM treasury: EM sovereign bonds (TESOURO, CETES) and YLDS as fintech treasury holdings | ideas/5-latam-treasury.md |
What it is: a collateral and liquidity network that lets Stellar anchors and fintechs use tokenized Treasuries as working capital.
These four are one company because they are one engine sold four ways:
| Shared piece | 1 Collateral | 2 Repo | 3 Exit | 5 LATAM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Soroban escrow that respects AUTH_REQUIRED, clawback and SEP-57 checks |
pledge lock | DvP leg | swap leg | holds treasury |
| RWA pricing: NAV plus a haircut and a circuit breaker (the YieldBlox/USTRY exploit is the reason) | haircut | repo margin | exit price | mark-to-market |
| Regulated custody / counterparty partner | needed | needed | needed | needed |
| USDC balance sheet or LP capital | lends it | lends it | pays it out | redeems into it |
| Customer | anchors | anchors, market makers | anchor end users | LATAM fintechs (often the same anchors) |
- Idea 2 is idea 1 with a clock. A pledge is a security interest. A repo transfers title and buys it back later. Same escrow, same haircut, same counterparties.
- Idea 3 only exists if someone funds it. The USDC paid out on instant exit has to come from somewhere, and the repo desk (idea 2) is where it comes from. As a company on its own, idea 3 is an LP with no cheap funding.
- Idea 5 is the go-to-market, not a product. TESOURO on Stellar is about $400k and 94 holders. That is too thin to carry a company. It is, though, the best first market for ideas 1–3: LATAM fintechs are anchors, they need prefunding, and the assets already sit on Stellar.
Build order: 1 (collateral rail with one anchor and one asset) → 3 (exit, funded by the collateral pool) → 2 (repo, once there are two sides to match) → 5 (sell the bundle to LATAM fintech treasuries).
Overlap: this is the direction chosen on 2026-09-09 (a corridor liquidity + compliance network for anchors), with RWAs as the collateral.
Ballast: strongest fit with the corridor thesis; needs a custody partner.
One question from the research is unanswered: why is $4B of Stellar RWA supply not used in DeFi?
- If issuers block transfers, collateral cannot move: Ballast must go through the issuer.
- If the cause is missing oracles and risk settings after the USTRY exploit: Ballast's pricing layer is the product.
- If institutions simply do not want it: stop — this repo's core assumption doesn't hold.
Ask 2–3 anchors and one issuer (Spiko or Etherfuse) before writing code.
Names are working names. Check trademarks and domains before using them publicly.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for the development setup, repo layout, and per-surface
checks (TypeScript and Rust/Soroban). All contributors are expected to follow the
Code of Conduct. Found a security issue? See
SECURITY.md — please don't open a public issue for it.
Ballast is MIT licensed.