Denelle Dixon, CEO of the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), recently told CoinDesk that the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has selected Stellar as the first public blockchain to be integrated into its tokenized securities settlement platform. The SDF is the non‑profit organization that builds and promotes the Stellar network, while DTCC serves as the backbone of U.S. financial market infrastructure; through its subsidiaries DTC and NSCC, it clears and settles virtually all U.S. equities, corporate bonds and municipal bonds, processing transactions worth tens of quadrillions of dollars annually. Dixon stated that the DTCC’s decision validates more than a decade of consistent work by the Stellar network to build institutional‑grade compliance infrastructure.
At the same time, the tokenized real‑world asset (RWA) footprint on Stellar is expanding rapidly. Dixon disclosed that the total RWA value on the network has climbed from roughly $1 billion in December 2024 to about $3 billion today. On Capitol Hill, the much‑watched Clarity Act would, if passed, provide clearer classification criteria and a regulatory framework for digital assets. Dixon stressed, however, that the pace of tokenization adoption will not be held back by any legislative delay; actual market demand and maturing infrastructure are pushing the trend forward.
Rock‑solid reliability and protocol‑level compliance
Dixon shared several core performance metrics of the Stellar network. Since its launch, the network has maintained more than 99.99% uptime – translating to less than 52 minutes of unscheduled downtime per year – a stability level essential for round‑the‑clock securities settlement systems. Every quarter the network processes billions of transactions, demonstrating the throughput required to support high‑frequency, large‑scale tokenization. Even more important, compliance features such as anti‑money laundering (AML) checks and necessary identity verification have been built directly into Stellar’s protocol layer, so institutions connecting to the network do not need to deploy third‑party compliance tools, thereby dramatically reducing integration complexity and regulatory risk.
A multi‑chain future and gradual migration
Looking ahead, Dixon expects tokenized assets to be spread across multiple public blockchains rather than concentrated on a single network. She argued that open, permissionless blockchains, with their faster iteration cycles and greater adaptability, will outperform closed or permissioned alternatives over the long run. Dixon also pointed to DTCC’s own operational scale as a reference: last year DTCC handled a staggering $4.7 quadrillion (4.7 × 10¹⁵) worth of securities transactions. She noted that given the immense size of traditional capital markets, tokenized settlement volumes cannot surge overnight; instead, the shift will be a gradual process. As regulatory frameworks become clearer and the technology stack matures, more institutions will migrate settlement workloads onto public chains in phases, slowly but inevitably moving from legacy book‑entry systems to on‑chain finality.