stellar
(5)
Stellar Development Foundation
The nonprofit behind Stellar wants to make moving money across borders as cheap as sending an email - and it has convinced MoneyGram, PayPal, and Franklin Templeton to help prove it.
Settle Network
Settle Network is a Buenos Aires-based fintech that builds the fiat-to-crypto rails Latin America runs on. Through its Latamex gateway and Stellar-based settlement infrastructure, it lets exchanges, businesses, and users convert local currencies like the Argentine peso and Brazilian real into crypto and stablecoins - and back again - in seconds. A Y Combinator S22 company backed by the Stellar Development Foundation, Settle became the on/off ramp behind global exchanges including Binance and OKX across the region.
Matt Wetrich
Matt Wetrich is the CEO of Stellar, a Dallas-based technology marketplace connecting large property owners with vetted tradespeople across single-family rental homes. He arrived as VP of Operations in May 2023, was handed the CEO seat during a liquidity crisis, and within 24 hours cut 70% of the company. Before Stellar he scaled Veho's US operations 15x, incubated Uber Eats' advertising and alcohol businesses, and started his career in investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Normal
Normal is a Chicago-based crypto company building a non-custodial wallet and investment protocol on the Stellar blockchain. Its app lets everyday users buy crypto, earn yield on USDC savings (routed through the Blend lending protocol), and swap assets with sub-second settlement and sub-cent fees. Beyond the wallet, Normal is building an on-chain 'investment layer' of diversified crypto index tokens - a Top 5 index, plus AI, DeFi, RWA and meme baskets - aiming to make holding a slice of the whole crypto market as simple as opening a savings account. The company's stated goal is blunt: 'make crypto normal.'
Justin Benjamin
Justin Benjamin is the co-founder and COO of Normal, a Chicago-based crypto savings and index investing platform built on Stellar. He is also a beach wrestling world champion - the first U.S. man to win a Senior Beach World Series gold medal - and serves as Head of Strategy for USA Wrestling. He was a Big Ten wrestler at Northwestern University and earlier built products at CoinFlip and Bitcoin of America before co-founding Normal through the Antler Boulder accelerator in 2022.