Global payments giant MoneyGram has deepened its involvement with the Stellar blockchain by becoming a Tier 1 validator, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced on July 16. The move, confirmed by MoneyGram on social media, marks a significant expansion from building on Stellar to actively powering its core infrastructure.
The announcement also welcomed Figure Markets and blockchain infrastructure firm Range as new Tier 1 validators. All three entities will operate multiple geographically distributed full validator nodes, participate in the Stellar Consensus Protocol, and help maintain network availability without relying on mining or staking rewards.
MoneyGram has collaborated with Stellar since 2021, initially enabling digital asset cash ramps and later supporting a consumer balance feature for dollar transactions. The validator role places the company among a trusted set of organizations responsible for securing the ledger, with strict technical standards—including 99.9% uptime, SEP-1 and SEP-20 self-verification, and close coordination during upgrades.
The SDF expects the new validators to be fully integrated into the network’s quorum configuration by mid-August. The expansion aims to bolster fault tolerance, geographic distribution, and operational resilience, particularly for regulated financial applications. This development underscores Stellar’s commitment to building infrastructure for institutional-grade decentralized finance.
