IRL × Stellar: Bringing Culture Onchain, Invisibly

During the Stellar Community Fund (SCF) Build Award period, IRL helped bring cultural onchain experiences to the Stellar ecosystem. From Meridian in Rio de Janeiro to Stellar House Miami, the community engaged with creative real-world activations that seamlessly connected onchain experiences through art exhibitions, community moments and more.

Across both cities, attendees were able to set their wallets up easily. They either used Meridian Pay or created a Privy-powered Stellar account by checking-in with the IRL Touchpoint. After interacting with the cultural activations, attendees were rewarded for participating in culture and were able to earn onchain points in a gallery at Stellar House Miami or redeem swag after a selfie moment in Rio. Each interaction was designed to feel intuitive, inviting people to explore onchain experiences in new ways.

The result: Stellar became the invisible infrastructure powering culture's loyalty layer.

IRL operates inside venues, festivals, art spaces, and nightlife environments where attention is scarce and momentum matters. The IRL network spans 73,000+ people across global cultural hubs, but scaling onchain identity in these spaces requires removing every barrier.

Stellar was able to help IRL achieve exactly that.

The IRL team shared that traditional onboarding flows don’t work easily in cultural hubs:

• People enter venues quickly
• No one wants to handle seed phrases at the door
• Desktop-oriented flows break inside mobile-first environments
• Crypto language alienates the audiences they serve

To reach cultural communities at scale, IRL needed an experience where checking in at an event or exhibition automatically created an onchain identity without people feeling like they were doing something “crypto.”

With support from SCF, IRL deployed a simple three-step flow across two major cultural activations:

1. Scan or tap the IRL Touchpoint® at the entrance
2. Create an account with Privy using email or social login
3. Earn IRL Points recorded on the Stellar blockchain

Time to onboard: under 30 seconds.

Most attendees didn’t realize they had created a Stellar-compatible wallet, they just knew they checked in, earned something, and gained access to the experience.

“This is the future we’re building toward: onchain participation that feels native to culture, not crypto”, shared Malcolm Levy, Founder of IRL.

At Meridian 2025 in Rio, Stellar powered a cultural flow built around Meridian Pay photo booths created with Checkpoint. Across three stations with artwork designed by Filipa Aurelio, attendees:

• Created a Meridian Pay account
• Snapped a portrait Future Primitive Checkpoint photo booth
• Received a printed keepsake, and unlocked a small gift

“It felt natural. A fun cultural moment that quietly onboarded people onchain. Over the course of Meridian 2025, 1,320 portraits were taken across the three stations. Each portrait directly onboarded someone into IRL via Meridian Pay and Checkpoint. Rio proved that Stellar can power real-world cultural participation without ever announcing itself”, shared Malcolm, Founder of IRL.

In Miami, IRL introduced an even broader cultural audience to onchain identity during Art Basel. As part of Stellar House’s programming, IRL powered the gallery check-in and reward flow.

Every attendee could:

• Create a Privy-powered Stellar account
• Check in through IRL Touchpoint®
• Earned IRL Points recorded on Stellar

But onboarding was only the beginning. Guests stepped directly into a full cultural experience.

A Refraction-curated exhibition as the cultural entry point

Inside Stellar House Miami, visitors:

• Explored never-before-seen artworks by Tabitha Swanson, Dina Chang, Ellie Pritts, Saeko Ehara, Genki Nishida, Ikaro Cavalcante, Andy Rolfes, and Nygilia
• Collected pieces using Meridian Pay, exclusively available to event attendees
• Participated in live programming with industry leaders

For many, this was the first time they used a wallet in a way that felt totally natural.

Miami showed something important: Stellar can be introduced to the world through art, music, and community participation.

IRL was able to demonstrate a new distribution model for blockchain adoption:

Culture becomes the gateway. Stellar becomes the infrastructure.

“This partnership wasn't a leap of faith - it was built on the Stellar network's decade-long reputation for building blockchain solutions that actually work in the real world. Since 2014, Stellar has been quietly powering global payments and financial systems for millions of people who've never had to think about what blockchain is. That's exactly what IRL needed: rails that work without announcing themselves”, shared Malcolm, Founder of IRL.

Across both cities, Stellar proved to be ideal for real-world onboarding:

• Fast enough to support long venue lines
• Low-cost enough to reward every attendee
• Reliable under high traffic
• Invisible — the highest compliment in culture
• Global — aligned with IRL’s multi-city expansion

IRL is scaling to New York, Toronto, Amsterdam, Berlin, Singapore, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and many more — and Stellar fits the exact profile needed to power that growth.

SCF funding didn’t just help Refraction build features - it enabled real, visible, cultural outcomes across two cities.

Because of the Stellar Build Award, attendees were able to:

• Create an onchain identity through a simple check-in
• Earn IRL Points recorded on Stellar
• Explore a global exhibition of digital artists
• Collect artworks via Meridian Pay
• Participate in cultural programming — and continue participating afterward

This is culture using Stellar rails without needing to understand them.

IRL is building a loyalty system that will live across multiple chains, with Stellar as a key layer for consumer-facing rewards and global settlement. Upcoming phases for the IRL team include:

• Powering high-frequency cultural rewards for IRL members
• IRL points offering access, ownership, governance
• Interoperability to connect cultural actions across ecosystems

Rio and Miami were just the beginning.

Stellar now has a path into culture globally - across exhibitions, events, festivals, and creative communities worldwide.

Learn more about SCF and IRL.