Loading...
Supporting developers, startups, and full-fledged companies building on Stellar and Soroban
© 2025 Stellar Development Foundation
Subscribe to the Newsletter
By Pipeline
Pipeline is a decentralized commodity trade finance protocol that produces on-chain yield from asset-backed commodity financing trades—short-duration, asset-backed loans at high borrowing rates. It targets the ~$2.5 trillion trade finance gap, widened by regulatory changes under Basel III that made commodity-backed lending to mid-market traders uneconomic for banks. The objective is to provide reliable rails for digital asset investors to access this historically hard-to-reach alternative financing opportunity through more structured, controlled risk exposure.
The foundation for the Pipeline protocol is a loan origination layer that onboards qualified loan originators—primarily private credit funds and specialized commodity finance lenders. These originators source and structure transactions and commit an equity cushion of 15–25% per facility, aligning incentives and absorbing first-loss risk.
On the protocol side, Pipeline implements a token architecture segregated from the principal held in institutional custody. At its core is PLUSD, a dollar receipt minted 1:1 against USDC deposited into the custody. PLUSD can be staked into dedicated vaults to earn yield derived from underlying commodity trades. The design draws on established models such as Ethena and USDai, while introducing a secondary liquidity layer for senior tranche participants.
Products & Services
Institutional custody & cash rail
USDC and tokenized T-bill reserves held in an institutional MPC wallet with multi-party signing
On/off-ramp between USDC and USD via institutional providers for loan disbursements and repayments
Idle capital automatically deployed into T-bills to earn base yield between loan deployments
Stellar integration: Cash rail architecture is designed for deployment on Soroban, with the relayer service connecting custody events to on-chain state transitions on Stellar
PLUSD — synthetic dollar and liquidity layer
A receipt token minted 1:1 against USDC, freely transferable, and composable across DeFi venues
Serves as an additional stablecoin liquidity layer — KYC-gated at mint, open for secondary market circulation across DeFi pools
Stellar integration: PLUSD contract is built for Soroban deployment with on-chain whitelist enforcement, rolling rate limits, and pausability governed by the foundation multisig on Stellar
sPLUSD — staking and yield distribution
sPLUSD staking vault token: stake PLUSD, receive sPLUSD, NAV accretes as senior coupon flows in — no periodic claiming required
Open to any PLUSD holder, enabling DeFi composability downstream without additional KYC
Stellar integration: sPLUSD vault logic runs as a Soroban smart contract, with yield accretion computed on-chain and exchange rate updates triggered by trustee-signed repayment events on Stellar
Loan registry and on-chain risk monitoring
Every loan facility is recorded on-chain with immutable origination data and mutable lifecycle state (active, watchlist, margin call, default, closed)
Real-time LTV monitoring via Platts/Argus price feeds pushed through independent oracles, with automated margin call triggers and volatility circuit breakers
Stellar integration: LoanRegistry deployed as a Soroban smart contract (ERC-721 equivalent), with loan lifecycle transitions, margin call events, and Risk Council default declarations all recorded and enforced on Stellar
Loan origination and underwriting
Qualified Loan Originators source commodity trades, perform credit assessment against Pipeline's tiered underwriting framework, and post 15–25% first-loss equity per facility
Three-tier borrower classification (Tier 1/2/3) with differentiated turnaround times, pricing bands, and advance rates based on track record
Stellar integration: Originator onboarding, loan origination requests, and equity tranche commitments are submitted through the originator interface and validated against the Soroban contract state before the relayer service prepares disbursement transactions on Stellar
Risk management and governance
3-of-5 Risk Council multisig with authority over loan approvals, margin calls, default declarations, and emergency pause functions
Automated collateral monitoring with multi-oracle price feeds, volatility circuit breakers (automatic 10pp LTV haircut when 7-day volatility exceeds 2× trailing 90-day), and hardware circuit breaker physically disconnecting custody from the token layer on any breach
Stellar integration: Risk Council operates as a Soroban-native multisig with on-chain threshold enforcement; all governance actions — pause, parameter changes, default declarations — are executed and recorded on Stellar
Yield waterfall and distribution
Smart contract waterfall distributes repayment proceeds in strict priority: senior coupon to sPLUSD holders → protocol fees → originator equity residual; losses run in reverse
Yield accretes to sPLUSD holders continuously via PLUSD minted into the vault — no manual distributions, no compounding gas costs
Stellar integration: Waterfall logic is encoded in Soroban smart contracts, with trustee-signed repayment events triggering on-chain mint operations that update the sPLUSD exchange rate on Stellar in real time
$140.0K
Project architecture
Legal structure based on a purpose trust for asset segregation
3-of-5 Risk Council governance framework with regulated trustee oversight
Split-rail technical architecture segregating custody from protocol logic
Robust credit policy with tiered underwriting and automated LTV monitoring
Qualified loan origination layer providing equity tranche
Partnerships
Open Mineral AG — inaugural originator (ex-Glencore founders, Mubadala-backed)
Reed Smith — legal counsel
Carey Olsen — offshore advisor
Deal pipeline
$50M in active discussions
First facility: jet fuel, Vitol on the supply side, South Korea → China corridor
First deployment: Q2 2026
Infrastructure
KYC/KYB: Sumsub — integration in progress
AML: Chainalysis — RFI received
Custody: BitGo — integration in progress
Backend and client application in development
Milestone definition
A reviewer can drive a complete deposit -> stake -> repayment-yield mint -> unstake -> withdrawal cycle on Stellar Futurenet, end-to-end, against the published architecture spec set.
Smart-contract deliverables
PLUSD (SEP-41) and sPLUSD vault implemented and deployed to Stellar Futurenet.
AccessHub and WhitelistRegistry implemented with selector-level scoping and 90-day KYC freshness gating.
DepositManager (atomic 1:1 mint path) and YieldMinter v1 (two-party Ed25519 + CustodyProxy __check_auth) deployed on Futurenet.
Soroban testutils unit + property suites green for the deployed contracts (PLUSD ledger invariant, whitelist transfer rule, two-party mint authority).
Architecture spec set published on GitHub: contract specs (.json), Relayer service decomposition, governance / multi-sig topology, threat model.
Relayer/backend deliverables
Indexer streaming Soroban RPC + Horizon events from Futurenet into Postgres.
Tx Submitter and Signer wired as separate processes; two-party yield-mint flow exercised end-to-end on Futurenet.
API Gateway (read-only) exposing balance-sheet, supply, and per-LP position endpoints to the LP App skeleton.
KMS / HSM wiring in a staging environment using the same Stellar Ed25519 key types.
Frontend deliverables
LP App skeleton: Freighter wallet connect, Futurenet USDC + BENJI trustlines wired, deposit + stake + claim happy-path screens.
Operations Console v0 (Trustee view only): origination queue stub and weekly yield signing UI wired to the API Gateway.
Completion check
All MVP contracts deployed on Futurenet; addresses and contract specs are public on GitHub.
Public Futurenet demo URL of the LP App skeleton; reviewer drives the deposit -> yield -> withdraw cycle in the browser.
Property + invariant suite green in CI; line coverage ≥ 75% on code committed to date.
Cost breakdown ($40,000 total)
Smart-contract suite: $18,000
Relayer/backend: $16,000
Frontend: $6,000
Milestone definition
Full eleven-contract suite, full Relayer backend, and full LP App + Operations Console + Protocol Dashboard live on Stellar Testnet. The reviewer drives a real test loan from origination through repayment and yield distribution end-to-end on the testnet.
Smart-contract deliverables
WithdrawalQueue (FIFO + sanction-skip + burn-on-claim) deployed on Testnet.
LoanRegistry (soulbound facility registry) deployed and integrated with the Operations Console origination flow.
ShutdownController + RecoveryPool deployed with ratchet-up-only recovery rate and dedicated USDC reserve path.
CustodyProxy CustomAccount contract deployed; __check_auth co-signature path exercised by the live custodian sandbox.
YieldMinter v2 with both repayment and lazy BENJI NAV mint legs.
Soroban native upgrade flow rehearsed end-to-end (update_current_contract_wasm gated by AccessHub 48 h ADMIN delay with GUARDIAN cancel).
Property + invariant test suite green at ≥ 90% line coverage; storage-layout diff check enforced in CI.
Relayer/backend deliverables
Orchestrator running the withdrawal-funding loop with Capital Wallet multi-sig auth on a Stellar testnet account.
Custodian Co-Signer Client integrated with the Fireblocks / BitGo Stellar adapter (sandbox tier) and exercised the two-party yield mint.
Loan price-feed and CCR monitor (Platts / Argus sandbox feeds) wired with threshold notifications.
Live reserve-reconciliation publisher rendering green/amber/red status against the backing invariant.
Incident-response runbooks published: Relayer key compromise, Trustee key compromise, custodian-attestor compromise, custodian outage.
Frontend deliverables
LP App: full journey (deposit, stake, request-withdraw, claim, per-LP dashboard with KYC-freshness indicator) live on testnet.
Operations Console: Trustee + Team + Originator views all live; weekly yield signing flow exercised against the live two-party Relayer.
Protocol Dashboard (4 panels - balance sheet, deployment monitor, withdrawal queue, yield history) rendering live testnet state with the reconciliation invariant gauge.
Operator auth (email + password + TOTP / WebAuthn) live in staging with role-scoped session middleware.
Cost breakdown ($45,000 total)
Smart-contract suite: $20,000
Relayer/backend: $17,000
Frontend: $8,000
Milestone definition
All eleven Soroban contracts are deployed on the Stellar Mainnet under final governance multi-sigs. Capital Wallet and Treasury Wallet are operational with live MPC cosigners. LP App, Operations Console, and Protocol Dashboard live on mainnet. Public mainnet launch with seed loan facility funded and the BENJI position established.
Smart-contract deliverables
Audit remediation against SCF-funded auditor findings; final WASM frozen and reproducibly built.
Mainnet deployment of all eleven contracts (PLUSD, sPLUSD, DepositManager, YieldMinter, WithdrawalQueue, WhitelistRegistry, LoanRegistry, ShutdownController, RecoveryPool, AccessHub, CustodyProxy).
Final governance setup: ADMIN 3-of-5, RISK_COUNCIL 3-of-5, GUARDIAN 2-of-5 - each a native Stellar multi-sig account configured via set_options with weighted signers and thresholds.
AccessHub timelock parameters set to production values (48 h ADMIN / 24 h RISK_COUNCIL / 14 d meta-timelock).
Storage-layout snapshot committed and CI gate enforced for all subsequent upgrades.
Relayer/backend deliverables
Relayer cluster in production with custodian production keys; Capital Wallet + Treasury Wallet operational with live MPC cosigners.
Production Chainalysis + Sumsub adapters; production Platts / Argus loan price-feed contracts.
Third-party append-only audit-log sink in production; on-call rotation procedure documented and rehearsed.
Production BENJI NAV feed adapter against Franklin Templeton mainnet feed.
Frontend deliverables
LP App, Operations Console, and Protocol Dashboard live on mainnet under the production domain.
KYC-freshness gating live with production Sumsub.
UX validation completed: onboarding flows tested, recovery flows tested, basic usability validation against ≥ 5 external LP wallets.
Public mainnet launch announcement and Discord testable build delivered.
Cost breakdown ($55,000 total)
Smart-contract suite: $22,000
Relayer/backend: $19,000
Frontend: $14,000
The founding team combines 15+ years of investment banking structuring experience with deep expertise in blockchain engineering, digital assets, securitization, and capital markets.
Alex Grebnev, CFA — Co-founder (Execution & Structuring). 15 years at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch (Bank of America), reaching Managing Director. Expert in capital markets and derivatives.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-grebnev-cfa-8796271/
Alex Melikhov, MSc Applied Math — Co-founder (Technology & Product). 10+ years building digital asset products across major blockchain ecosystems, including Ethereum and Polkadot.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melikhov
The engineering team includes five full-time senior specialists and brings production-grade experience in Rust and Soroban development. Pipeline builds on infrastructure originally developed for Slender, a Stellar-native money market — proven code, new product, sharper market fit.
AlexM
No other submissions.