Stellar CEO Says Tokenization Will Proceed Even if Clarity Act Stalls

Last week, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) launched a collaboration with the Stellar blockchain.

In an interview with CoinDesk published Tuesday (June 2), Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon said that move legitimizes years of blockchain infrastructure designed for institutional use.

As Dixon said, DTCC picked Stellar as the first public blockchain linked to its upcoming tokenized securities settlement platform. She called this partnership “the moment Stellar was built for” following more than a decade focused on compliance and institutional requirements.

The report noted that regulatory developers are helping institutions shift from experimentation to deployment, with Dixon telling CoinDesk that the GENIUS Act gave financial institutions confidence that the federal government planned to support the industry with clearer regulations.

Dixon added that while the passage of the Clarity Act will help the industry, tokenization adoption will likely still proceed even if the bill fizzles.

The CoinDesk report noted that massive transaction volumes are still a crucial test facing blockchain-based financial infrastructure.

DTCC processed $4.7 quadrillion in securities transactions in 2025, the report said, highlighting the scale already supported by traditional market infrastructure.

Dixon acknowledged that tokenized settlement volumes will tick up gradually rather than reaching peak scale right away, and told CoinDesk that maintaining reliability and preventing network outages are key requirements for institutional adoption.

In other blockchain-related news, PYMNTS wrote last week about recent developments within the stablecoin industry that demonstrate that the technology is functioning, such as the Bank for International Settlements and its partners successfully testing blockchain-based cross-border settlement flows.

The digital dollar industry is “now approaching a more difficult phase of development where success will be measured not by how quickly stablecoins move between wallets but by whether businesses and consumers can use those assets in the real economy without introducing new friction, cost or complexity,” PYMNTS wrote.

“The first challenge was proving that value can move on chain. The next challenge is figuring out how that value becomes economically useful once it moves off chain,” the report added.

The stablecoin networks that enjoy mainstream success are likely to be the ones that balance openness and institutional trust, the report added.

“Too much decentralization can create compliance uncertainty. Too much centralization can undermine the efficiency and programmability advantages that made blockchain attractive in the first place,” PYMNTS concluded. “Because the value proposition is not ‘crypto.’ It is operational efficiency.”