SCF Spotlights: COCA

In today’s SCF Spotlight, we’re rolling out the red carpet for Pavel Matveev of COCA, a non-custodial, stablecoin-native wallet that focuses on solving the common security and usability concerns faced by Web3 users.

For Pavel, as a founder, there’s no unconventional “secret sauce” to being successful. His philosophy is simple: identify a real problem and dedicate yourself to solving it. Too often, he says, founders find themselves chasing solutions to problems that don’t exist or only matter to a small niche of users.

With COCA, Pavel deliberately chose a different path with clear problem statements. As a retail-focused app designed for the mass market, COCA’s target audience is far broader than products designed for a small subset of users. That wide vision is part of what has fueled COCA’s success. He points out that pain points are obvious once you look for them, especially in Web3. People are intimidated by 24-word seed phrases, and they want to use crypto in their everyday lives, not just in isolated ecosystems. Solving those kinds of challenges is what gives COCA its mass-market appeal.

Pavel is also quick to offer advice to aspiring founders with this straight talk: entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone.

He compares entrepreneurship to an interview process. Think back to your first job interview: you walk in nervous, stumble through answers, and walk out wishing you had said something different. By the second, third, or fourth interview, you’ve started to anticipate the questions, your delivery improves, and your confidence grows. Starting a business works similarly. The first time you pitch your product, it may not land. Investors will poke holes you hadn’t considered, or customers may react in unexpected ways. But each attempt teaches you something new. And over time, you develop resilience that will ultimately define you as an entrepreneur.

That same mindset shaped Pavel’s journey from the very beginning. COCA is redefining how people use cryptocurrency by blending blockchain technology with the convenience of neobanking (aka no brick and mortar), creating an all-in-one digital super app. At its core, COCA addresses two of the biggest barriers to adoption, security and usability, through Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology that replaces seed phrases and through non-custodial debit cards linked directly to a user’s wallet for everyday spending online, in-store, or via Apple Pay and Google Pay. By combining advanced security with seamless payments, COCA transforms crypto from a niche tool into a financial experience as familiar as mobile banking while staying true to decentralized self-custody.

COCA’s vision of blending cryptocurrency with everyday finance needed a blockchain purpose-built for payments. Stellar was one of the first platforms to focus on payments as a use case, long before it became mainstream in the industry. That early commitment, along with a head start in solving the complex task of integrating blockchain with existing systems and everyday users, gave COCA the solid foundation it needed to bring crypto into everyday financial flows.

Pavel explains that building on Stellar is about more than just the technology. SDF supports Stellar ecosystem builders not only through providing funding in part, but also facilitating access to a vibrant network of like-minded builders who share a focus on real-world payment use cases. That combination of platform, resources, and community support has created a uniquely powerful environment for projects like COCA to grow.

Through the 25th round of SCF, COCA received a $50K grant to integrate USDC support, unlocking the ability for users to spend stablecoins at 80 million merchants in more than 200 countries. That milestone fueled rapid growth and set the stage for COCA’s Series A, led by SDF with a $1M investment.

This trajectory showcases what makes SCF unique. By recognizing strong use cases, impactful applications, and visionary founders, SCF helps projects like COCA gain early traction, provide partial funding, guidance, and access to a broader network of resources and community support.

Keep up with all the amazing work COCA is doing by visiting https://coca.xyz and following https://coca.xyz on X.

Want to build alongside founders like Pavel? We don’t blame you! Apply for the Stellar Community Fund with your project and join the community by heading to the Stellar Developer Discord. Can’t wait to see you there!