Stellar Community Fund

By Talwex

Stellar Vault for Real-World Bonds

SCF #43

$150.0K

Build

Test Transaction

Products & Services

The Talwex Bond Yield Pool is a Soroban-based vault where users deposit USDC and earn yield sourced from real corporate bond coupons held in custody off-chain. The vault token is a utility token — a pool receipt, not a security — which broadens investor access while keeping vault operations outside BD/ATS scope.

A word on bond coupons for reviewers less familiar with fixed incomes.

A corporate bond is a loan to a company: in return, the company pays the lender periodic "coupons" (fixed interest payments, typically semi-annual) plus the principal back at maturity. These coupons are predictable, contractually obligated cash flows — not speculative returns. In this product, real coupons from real corporate bonds flow through the custodian, get converted to USDC, and land in the pool. LPs claim their pro-rata share. The yield is mechanical: Talwex has zero discretion over it.

Why a Soroban smart contract rather than a native Stellar liquidity pool.

Stellar supports native liquidity pools without smart contracts, and for simple AMM use cases that's the right tool. It's the wrong tool here for four reasons: (1) native pools cannot enforce wallet-level compliance gating (KYC-whitelisted wallets only), which is a hard requirement for real-world bond distribution; (2) native pools operate on a constant-product AMM model inappropriate for a coupon-distribution mechanic — we need pro-rata entitlement accounting, not swap pricing; (3) the reserve ratio model, withdrawal throttling, and bank-run mitigation logic require programmable control flow; (4) proof-of-reserve attestation registry integration requires custom contract logic. Soroban gives us all of this with the same few seconds finality and near-zero fees.

Core components on Stellar:

1. Soroban Vault Contract. USDC deposits/withdrawals, vault token mint/burn, pro-rata share accounting, reserve ratio enforcement. Compliance-gated: only allowlisted wallets can interact with the vault.

2. Coupon Accumulator. Ingests USDC from the custodian's operational wallet, tracks pro-rata entitlements per LP, handles claims. Stellar's $0.00001-per-op cost is what makes frequent small coupon claims economically viable — the same product on an L1 EVM would be gas-prohibitive at retail ticket sizes.

3. Bond Token Registry. Stellar-native securities representing 1:1 custody positions on locked bonds, non-transferable by design, locked in the vault as collateral.

4. Proof-of-Reserve Attestation Registry. Dedicated contract storing signed custodian attestations — each attestation references a PDF pinned to IPFS (via Filebase), with the CID, timestamp, document hash, and custodian signature recorded on-chain. The frontend dashboard displays live collateralization ratio (on-chain bond face value vs. USDC pool obligations) sourced from the registry. This is a credibility and regulatory-posture essential as it demonstrates the non-custodial architecture in a cryptographically verifiable way.

5. Reserve Manager. Target 20% / minimum 10% USDC reserve ratio. Throttles withdrawals under stress, prioritizes incoming coupons to reserve replenishment during critical states. Bank-run mitigation layer.

6. Stellar Wallets Kit integration. LP-facing frontend uses Stellar Wallets Kit for multi-wallet support (Freighter, Albedo, xBull, Lobstr, Hana, WalletConnect). Standardized wallet UX, future-proof against new wallets, and aligned with ecosystem best practices.

7. Native USDC settlement. Circle's Stellar-native USDC means coupon conversion and LP settlement happen without wrapping or bridging — cleaner than any multi-chain alternative.

8. Compliance-gated wallet allowlisting. See the access section below.

Access & KYC.

The vault is open to any user worldwide subject to a one-time wallet allowlisting. We accept standard KYC (identity verification, source of funds declaration) with no accreditation requirement. Rejection criteria are strictly binary and standard: sanctions hits (OFAC/EU/UK/UN lists), PEP category 1 (active senior political figures and immediate family), and adverse-media hits involving financial crime. No accredited-investor gate, no jurisdictional gate beyond sanctioned countries. Allowlisting is the minimum viable compliance layer that keeps us OFAC-compliant and consistent with custodian/bond-issuer requirements — without it, no custodian will agree to route real-world bond coupons to the pool.

Custodian relationship & setup.

The flow involves three parties: (1) Client — an institution holding corporate bonds, locks them at a qualified custodian in a segregated account legally pledged to mirror the on-chain representation 1:1. (2) Custodian — holds the bonds, receives fiat coupons from the bond issuer, converts fiat to USDC via Circle's banking integration (Mint API), and pushes USDC on-chain into the vault via a dedicated operational wallet. (3) Talwex — provides the full technology stack. This includes setting up the custodian's institutional-grade on-chain wallet (MPC-secured), integrating the fiat-to-USDC ramp, deploying and operating the Soroban contracts, managing the attestation registry, and running the LP frontend. Talwex never takes custody of bonds, fiat, or USDC at any point — the custodian wallet pushes USDC directly to the smart contract, and the contract distributes directly to LP wallets. Contractual framework between Talwex and the custodian is a standard tokenization services agreement specifying operational responsibilities, attestation cadence, SLAs, and liability allocation.

Requested Budget

$150.0K

Traction Evidence

Talwex Inc. is a Delaware C-Corp actively pursuing SEC Broker-Dealer and Alternative Trading System (ATS) licensing for its core tokenized bond exchange. In parallel, we are building a suite of vault-based products designed to operate under regulatory exemptions while the main license is pending — the Stellar Bond Yield Pool is one of them.

Relevant traction to date:

Regulated-blockchain track record. Founder previously built and obtained AMF/PSAN approval for Kamea Labs, a CASP-regulated crowdfunding and tokenization platform in France — one of Europe's most demanding regulatory environments for crypto.
First institutional client live on the Talwex marketplace, and 3 others onboarding (https://groupe.one-experience.fr/, https://lend.xyz/, https://adomos.com/le-groupe).
Active sales pipeline of ~13 engaged prospects, including European crowdfunding/tokenization platforms, Euronext-listed issuers, public US companies, and financial services firms evaluating tokenized bonds distribution.
Vaults traction. Working on a security-based vault on the Canton network to address institutional clients.
Investor backing. Pre-seed round ongoing with participation from Pierre Voillet (entrepreneur, built and sold two 250+ employee groups), Blockwall VC, and advisors from UBS, JP Morgan, Google and more.
Legal and technical architecture validated. Eight detailed architecture and compliance questions recently answered for US counsel (https://www.aoshearman.com) as part of the BD/ATS filing process.

Tranche 1 (Deliverable Roadmap) - MVP

Smart Contract MVP & Testnet Vault

Budget: $45,000

Core Vault Soroban smart contract (Rust). Deposit, withdraw, mint/burn vault tokens (utility token), pro-rata share accounting. Deployed and verifiable on Stellar testnet.
1. Measure of completion: Contract deployed to testnet with public address; functional test suite with all critical flow and code paths covered; end-to-end walkthrough demo (deposit USDC → receive vault tokens → burn → receive USDC).
Reserve Manager module. Reserve ratio tracking (target 20%, minimum 10%), withdrawal throttling logic, coupon-priority routing when reserves are below threshold.
1. Measure of completion: Unit tests validating all three reserve states (Healthy / Caution / Critical); reserve ratio readable via contract view function.
Coupon Accumulator contract. Accepts USDC inflows, tracks per-LP pro-rata entitlement, handles partial and full claims.
1. Measure of completion: LPs can claim accrued coupons without affecting principal; claim history queryable on-chain.
Testnet integration with native USDC (Stellar testnet USDC asset).
1. Measure of completion: End-to-end USDC flow on testnet with at least three distinct LP wallets.

Tranche 2 (Deliverable Roadmap) - Testnet

Bond Token Registry, Frontend, Proof-of-Reserve

Budget: $55,000

Bond Token Registry. Stellar-native asset issuance for bond tokens representing 1:1 custody positions; non-transferability enforced; lock/unlock logic tied to the vault; maturity and credit-event hooks.
1. Measure of completion: Registry deployed on testnet; at least one simulated bond token locked as collateral; credit-event notification path tested.
Proof-of-Reserve Attestation Registry. Dedicated Soroban contract storing signed custodian attestations with IPFS CID, timestamp, document hash, and signer key. Filebase integration for IPFS pinning redundancy. Only pre-registered custodian keys can write.
1. Measure of completion: Registry deployed on testnet; at least three simulated attestations written and retrievable; frontend displays live collateralization ratio sourced from the registry.
Fiat-to-USDC bridge integration path. Integration design and working testnet implementation of the custodian coupon ingress path (simulated fiat coupon → Circle USDC on Stellar → vault via custodian operational wallet).
1. Measure of completion: End-to-end automated test: simulated coupon arrives in vault, accrues pro-rata to LP balances, LPs can claim.
Custodian wallet infrastructure design. Production specification and testnet implementation of the MPC-secured custodian operational wallet, including policy rules, signing quorums, and withdrawal limits.
1. Measure of completion: Documented wallet architecture; testnet implementation using an MPC setup; policy document reviewable by institutional counterparties.
LP-facing frontend (React + Stellar Wallets Kit). Multi-wallet connect via Stellar Wallets Kit (usual hot wallets and cold wallets like Ledger or Trezor, WalletConnect...). Deposit/withdraw UI, live APY, accrued coupons dashboard, pool health metrics, reserve ratio and proof-of-reserve visualization.
1. Measure of completion: Public testnet dApp at a fixed URL; complete LP journey demonstrable with screen recording across at least two wallet providers.
Compliance-gated wallet allowlisting (on-chain KYC). Third-party identity provider integration (Sumsub or equivalent) producing on-chain allowlist entries. Rejection logic for OFAC/EU/UK/UN sanctions, PEP category 1, and financial-crime adverse media.
1. Measure of completion: Testnet deposits blocked for non-allowlisted wallets; verified wallets able to transact; rejection criteria documented and tested.

Tranche 3 (Deliverable Roadmap) - Mainnet

Mainnet Launch

Budget: $50,000

Security hardening and audit remediation. Address all findings from SCF-provided security audit credits*. Formal verification of the core accounting invariants (pool share = USDC entitlement; sum of LP entitlements ≤ total USDC + pending coupons).
1. Measure of completion: Clean audit report; all high/critical findings resolved; public remediation summary.
Mainnet deployment & production setup. All contracts deployed to Stellar mainnet with verified source. Admin operations (upgrades, parameter changes, emergency pause) controlled by a 2-of-3 multisig with timelock. Production RPC via institutional provider with failover; Mercury indexer for historical positions, coupon distributions, and reserve-ratio time-series. Production frontend live at a talwex.com subdomain with native USDC integration. First custodian onboarded end-to-end on mainnet: MPC-secured operational wallet, Circle fiat-to-USDC ramp live, first bonds tokenized and locked, first coupon events distributed, first on-chain proof-of-reserve attestation published.
1. Measure of completion: Mainnet contract addresses published; multisig configuration verifiable on-chain; frontend publicly accessible; first live custodian executes full end-to-end flow (bond lock → tokenization → coupon → LP distribution → attestation); first real-user deposit executed; Documented disaster recovery procedures including multisig key recovery, RPC/indexer failover testing, and a tabletop-tested incident response playbook.
Operational runbook and monitoring. Real-time dashboard (reserve ratio, pool size, APY, collateral composition) publicly viewable; incident response procedures; pause/circuit-breaker mechanism documented and tested.
1. Measure of completion: Public transparency dashboard live; operational documentation published.
Professional user testing. Structured user testing sessions with external participants covering full LP journey; findings document published.
1. Measure of completion: User testing report delivered; any critical UX findings addressed pre or immediately post-launch.

*We are planning to ask for separate audit credits to finalize auditing before mainnet launch. We will audit our code in any case before launching.

Team

I am André Dibé (https://www.linkedin.com/in/andredibe/), a Lebanese-Canadian entrepreneur based in Paris and relocating to New York City. Double engineering degrees from Mines Paris and ESPCI Paris and a music performance degree from a Paris Jazz school. Last decade spent at the intersection of entrepreneurship, fundraising, blockchain, capital markets, and regulation.

In 2022, I founded Kamea Labs, a CASP-regulated crowdfunding and syndicate platform in France, operating under the AMF/PSAN framework — one of the most demanding regulatory environments for crypto in Europe. I obtained AMF approval, raised $1.5M from funds and angels plus $500k non-dilutive, built a team of 12, and reached $500k revenue within the first six months of operations. A co-founder dispute forced me out of that profitable company — which eventually went bankrupt one year after I was forced out — my investors backed me to start again with sharper judgment and a larger market in sight. hence Talwex.

Current Talwex team:

André Dibé — Founder & CEO. Regulatory, capital markets, blockchain architecture. https://www.linkedin.com/in/andredibe/
Pierre Voillet — Advisor & Board Member, investor. Experienced entrepreneur who built and sold two major groups of 250+ employees. https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierre-voillet-532823182/
Iloan Valero — Product Lead, investor. ESCP Europe and EM Lyon. https://www.linkedin.com/in/iloanvalero/
Mathis Egonneau — Sales & Marketing Lead. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathis-egonneau/
Arno Burnuk — Full-Stack Developer. https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnoburnuk/
Carl Créange — Advisor, investor. Spent 15 years at Google managing digital projects. https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlcreange/