Announced at Meridian 2026 (Lisbon). Pontoro has launched on Stellar the first live pilot of its Automated Liquidity Pool, which combines a liquid portion in money market funds with interests in private funds, such as private credit. This gives a private fund investor an exit route, at a variable discount. Archax, regulated in the United Kingdom, the EU and the U.S., issues the interests as permissioned tokens.
The SDF is an investor in Pontoro and in Archax. It is an unregistered offering, under exemptions, only for select investors, and the size of the pilot has not been disclosed.
Pontoro and Archax to launch the first Automated Liquidity Pool (ALP) on Stellar at Meridian 2026.
LISBON, Portugal, October 28, 2026. Pontoro Inc. today announced the launch of the first Pontoro Automated Liquidity Pool (ALP), a single investment fund that combines liquid money market assets with private market funds and uses rules-based pricing to manage liquidity between them, on the Stellar network. The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), the non-profit foundation that supports the Stellar network, is collaborating with Pontoro on the ALP, alongside Archax, and the tokens will be issued on the Stellar network.
Tokenized finance has been built layer by layer. Blockchains provided the infrastructure. Tokenization brought a digital form for assets. Stablecoins, dollar-backed digital currencies, and tokenized money market funds provided on-chain cash. One layer remained: liquidity for private assets.
Tokenization gives private assets a faster and simpler way to move. Liquidity is something different. It is capital available to buy, a price that adjusts as conditions change, and incentives that attract new capital when liquidity is scarce. The ALP is designed to provide that missing liquidity layer and to connect the existing pieces into functional market infrastructure.
“Private markets have developed virtually every layer of their infrastructure except one: liquidity,” said Antonio Vitti, CEO and co-founder of Pontoro . “Tokenization has provided better rails for private assets. A market also needs capital, a price and a mechanism to manage that capital as conditions change. That is the missing layer the ALP is designed to deliver. With contributions from a group of institutions across every stage of investment and operations, we can now take this idea from architecture to a live pilot.”
How the pool works
An ALP holds two sleeves within a single vehicle. The liquid sleeve holds money market funds and cash-like assets. The private sleeve holds interests in private market funds, such as private credit. Three functions, run by Pontoro’s platform under the direction of the fund manager, connect the two :
- Designed for priced liquidity. An investor in a private fund seeking liquidity can offer to sell their interest to the pool, subject to available liquidity and the manager’s discretion. The fund keeps its portfolio intact. The platform prices the liquidity each purchase consumes. As the pool’s liquidity declines, the discount it requires for new purchases of private assets increases. As liquidity is replenished, the discount decreases. The manager’s valuation of each asset and the price of liquidity remain separate.
- Pool redemptions are met first from the liquidity reserve. Redemption requests from the pool’s own investors are met from the liquidity reserve, so private assets can remain invested. If the liquidity reserve is depleted, redemptions may be delayed, reduced or suspended in accordance with the Offering Documents.
- Incentives help restore balance. As liquidity is consumed, pricing and yield can adjust according to pre-set rules, making it more attractive to contribute new liquidity and helping the pool return to its target balance.
The goal is to achieve liquidity that stays steady where it has been intermittent.
Tokenize the pool and the portfolio becomes an on-chain product.
The pilot program also introduces a new path for tokenization. The assets within an ALP could be tokenized funds or traditional funds; the pilot uses tokenized funds. The pool’s interests are always on-chain, and with the growing availability of tokenized assets, much of the model could be driven by smart contracts in the future, issued as permissioned tokens on the Stellar network and held in approved, identity-verified wallets. The funds within the pool remain intact. Managers get an on-chain product built from their existing fund range, and on-chain investors get a single token representing an interest in a managed portfolio with a built-in liquidity engine.
Pontoro provides the technology, modeling and operational infrastructure. The fund manager retains full authority over investment strategy, asset selection, valuation and governance.
The pilot: one stack, six roles
The pilot brings together six critical functions in a single live environment: network and capital, liquid assets, private assets, tokenization, institutional operations and the liquidity architecture that connects them.
About the statements below: The Stellar Development Foundation is an investor in Pontoro and in Archax. No specific compensation was offered for any of the statements.
“The Stellar network was built for real-world assets, and liquidity is the layer that turns tokenized private funds into a working market,” said José Fernández da Ponte, President and Chief Growth Officer of the Stellar Development Foundation. “The ALP seeks to show what is possible when cash, credit and tokenization converge on the same open network.”
Tokenization: Archax. Archax, the digital asset platform regulated in the United Kingdom, the EU and the U.S., issues the pool’s interests as permissioned tokens on Stellar.
“Institutions adopt new market structures when they are built into a regulated framework,” said Nick Donovan, Chief Revenue Officer at Archax . “Issuing fund interests as permissioned tokens through regulated digital market infrastructure gives investors the control they expect, verified ownership and clear records, along with the speed and programmability of a modern network. Combining this infrastructure with systematic liquidity management moves tokenized private assets toward a much more robust investment ecosystem.”
Liquidity architecture: Pontoro. Pontoro’s platform runs the pricing, redemption and yield allocation rules that connect all the other layers.
Liquidity and distribution are one problem.
For asset managers, liquidity architecture is also a tool for capital formation. Greater visibility into how liquidity is provided and priced can remove a major barrier to allocation in private markets. A systematic liquidity layer is designed to help managers access new distribution channels and retain capital within their ecosystem. Tokenization can also create an additional distribution channel, allowing eligible investors to access the structure through programmable digital infrastructure, subject to applicable eligibility and regulatory requirements. In a 500-participant study published by Pontoro in April 2026, first-time readers of the platform demonstrated strong objective comprehension after a single read. The study suggested that the remaining adoption gap lay less in basic understanding than in institutional sponsorship, operational credibility and proof of execution. This pilot is designed to begin providing that proof.
“Liquidity and distribution are two sides of the same coin,” Vitti added. “A clearer, more systematic liquidity framework can make private market products easier to distribute and help managers attract, retain and recycle capital. Better liquidity infrastructure has implications that go far beyond the secondary market. It can change how private market capital is formed and distributed.”
The pilot is the first live deployment of the ALP. Pontoro’s platform is designed for asset managers, fund platforms and financial institutions to launch and run their own pools, and Pontoro plans further launches with institutional partners.
See it at Meridian
Pontoro will present the pilot at Meridian 2026 in Lisbon on October 28 and 29, 2026.
About the Stellar network
The Stellar network is a decentralized, fast and scalable blockchain designed for financial products and services. It supports smart contracts and facilitates the issuance, management and transfer of regulated real-world assets at institutional scale.
Assets can be fully decentralized or configured to comply with KYC requirements, clawbacks and sanctions. Franklin Templeton runs a tokenized money market fund on Stellar, and MoneyGram moves money through it daily.
Open means no vendor lock-in. Configurable means enterprise-ready. The Stellar network has been serving payments and financial use cases since 2014.
About Pontoro
Pontoro is a financial infrastructure company building the liquidity and distribution layer for private markets. Its Automated Liquidity Pool (ALP) platform enables asset managers, fund platforms and financial institutions to launch and operate pools that combine liquid and private assets, with rules-based liquidity pricing, redemption management and yield allocation. Pontoro is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is backed by Unbound, Stellar Development Foundation, Ulu Ventures, Illuminate Financial and Neva SGR (a fund affiliated with the Intesa Sanpaolo Group). For more information, visit www.pontoro.com. For partnership inquiries: partnerships@pontoro.com.
About Archax
Archax is a digital asset platform regulated in the United Kingdom, the EU and the U.S., serving professionals and institutions.
Founded by experts from traditional capital markets, Archax supports all types of digital assets, from unregulated cryptocurrencies to regulated tokenized real-world assets (RWA).
Archax also covers the entire digital lifecycle, from token issuance and fundraising to trading and custody.
Archax provides the global, regulated on-chain capital markets infrastructure that enables participants in traditional financial markets to access the digital/crypto/DeFi space.
Learn more at www.archax.com.
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