Tomer Weller | You Can Move Millions Without a Bank. He Already Did.

On today’s Talking Tokens episode, Jacquelyn sat down with Tomer Weller, Chief Product Officer at the Stellar Development Foundation. Stellar is a blockchain network focused on real-world financial use cases — from cross-border payments to tokenized treasuries — and has quietly built one of the strongest infrastructures in emerging markets like Latin America and Africa, including a major partnership with MoneyGram.They discuss Stellar’s evolution over the past 11 years, why it chose to stay mission-aligned while others chased hype, and how it’s enabling native crypto-to-cash flows, seamless DeFi access, and developer-friendly smart contracts with Soroban. Tomer also shares his take on Web3 product design, the future of privacy, and what it takes to earn institutional trust.Timestamps(0:00) - Intro(1:01) - Tomer’s background & joining Stellar(2:33) - How Stellar has evolved over the years(5:18) - Cross-border payments & MoneyGram integration(8:06) - UX: Making crypto invisible to users(11:46) - What makes a bad Web3 product(13:16) - Why security needs to come first(15:02) - Soroban & Stellar’s smart contracts vision(20:27) - Governance, validators & institutional trust(26:28) - Why developers choose to build on Stellar(27:32) - DeFi + RWAs: New frontier for tokenization(30:02) - What institutions want next: PrivacyYou can subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple or YouTube. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review!Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0LOgWxIQ0NnNUD5eXsSuoZApple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talking-tokens/id1743669141Follow us on X: Jacquelyn: https://twitter.com/jacqmelinek Talking Tokens: https://twitter.com/_TalkingTokens Token Relations: https://twitter.com/Token_Relations Follow us on InstagramTalking Tokens: https://www.instagram.com/_talkingtokens/Note that this podcast is for informational purposes only and any views shared by anyone on the show are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have a direct or indirect financial interest in content mentioned in this episode.