Stellar CEO Says CLARITY Act Would Help, but Tokenization Doesn’t Depend on It

The chief executive officer of the Stellar Development Foundation said the US CLARITY Act could support the tokenization industry, but broader adoption of tokenized assets does not depend on that legislation alone. Her comments come as the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., or DTCC, plans to connect Stellar to its tokenized securities settlement platform, drawing attention to institutional adoption of public blockchains.

CoinDesk reported on June 2 that DTCC has chosen Stellar as the first public blockchain for its planned tokenized securities settlement platform, according to Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon.

Dixon said the decision validates Stellar’s long-standing strategy of building infrastructure for institutions. She said the network has spent more than a decade developing around regulatory compliance and institutional requirements, and described the partnership as “a moment that shows why Stellar was built.”

Tokenized real-world assets on Stellar have also grown rapidly. Dixon said the total exceeded $1 billion in December 2025 and expanded to about $3 billion roughly five months later.

On the regulatory front, she said the GENIUS Act sent a positive signal to financial institutions. In her view, the bill gave firms confidence that the US government is seeking to support the industry through a clearer regulatory framework.

Still, Dixon said the tokenization trend does not hinge on the passage of any single bill. Financial companies including Franklin Templeton were already building tokenized products such as Stellar-based money market funds before the recent legislative debate. She added that while passage of the CLARITY Act would benefit the industry, adoption of tokenization would not stop even if the bill were delayed.

Stellar has emphasized compliance, privacy and scalability as core features for institutional adoption. Dixon said the network has maintained high uptime and processes billions of transactions each quarter. She also said Stellar has built compliance tools into the network architecture to reduce issuers’ reliance on custom smart contracts when creating assets.

Reliability is also a central challenge for institutional tokenization infrastructure. DTCC processed $470 quadrillion of securities transactions last year, according to Dixon. She said tokenized settlement volumes are unlikely to reach that scale in the near term, but stable operations without network outages will be essential for institutional adoption.

Dixon said tokenized assets are likely to be distributed across multiple public blockchains rather than concentrated on a single network. Instead of one chain dominating all institutional tokenization activity, she expects a small number of blockchains with distinct technical strengths to handle most real-world asset issuance.

She also said open public blockchains could hold a long-term advantage over closed systems. Because developers around the world can participate, technological progress can move faster and features tailored to institutional needs can be improved more flexibly.