North Stars that Guide SDF

Open participation, innovation, and governance are necessary for a future-proof and sustainable Stellar

Stellar needs to be important to a variety of stakeholders in a variety of geographies and industries for it to achieve the level of integration and use to make it a useful solution for a wide array of problems. The technology stack cannot be built in a manner that inadvertently excludes its use in certain regions. It also should not be built only for a single purpose - rather, it needs to be flexible enough to achieve a variety of goals. Open participation supports this type of engagement. Stellar must be easy, practical, and efficient for developers to build on for products that solve real problems for users or businesses worldwide. The involvement of many in the development and execution layer of Stellar future-proofs the network. Decentralization is a driver to this type of success, requiring that participants build, use, evangelize, and provide the care and feeding to Stellar that propels it forward. Stellar must be flexible enough to support what we know is valuable today AND what we and the ecosystem haven't yet conceived.

SDF prioritizes the focus on everyday financial services in pursuit of our mission

SDF must be opinionated about what it supports, even if Stellar is built as an innovation-agnostic platform. We want Stellar to be an open platform for developers to be creative and innovate in the areas that interest them. Still, we also want to be judicious about how we devote our resources as an organization toward increasing access to the global financial system. That means when it comes to supporting specific companies and use cases, we look at the ones building the everyday financial services products that can make today's system more accessible.

A trustworthy technology stack advances adoption for everyday financial services

Blockchain offers innovation with new levels of transparency – and Stellar, which leverages reputation as part of its design, can be a true beacon of trust in the industry. As innovation evolves, SDF needs to ensure that Stellar lives up to the standard of trust that users want from their everyday financial services. We do that by setting standards, including payment standards, that take root because a diverse set of players adopts them. These standards must be useful and should put consumer protection first and create the type of interoperability that will make them successful.