Egyptian fintech Remi lands $135K Stellar grant for confidential settlement
What's the deal? Egyptian-founded, UAE-based fintech Remi has received about $135,000 from the Stellar Community Fund to build a confidential settlement layer for regulated financial institutions on the Stellar network. The project targets banks, exchange houses, and payment service providers that want blockchain-based settlement without exposing transaction amounts and balances on a public ledger.
What's the endgame? Remi's system will keep amounts and balances encrypted on-chain while retaining oversight for authorised parties. It will use zero-knowledge proofs to validate transfers without publicly revealing transaction values.
The architecture will also require new accounts to escrow a viewing key that an authorised auditor can access when needed. Disclosure can be limited to individual transfers rather than an account's full history.
Remi is also developing sponsored network fees, so institutions sending and receiving funds do not need to hold or interact with cryptocurrency to use the infrastructure.
Why Stellar? The company said it chose the network for its payment-focused infrastructure, fast settlement, low costs, and support for currency-to-currency movement. It also cited Stellar's established anchors and liquidity, which connect digital assets with local currencies.
Part of the grant will fund open tools for financial operators, including dashboards, a sponsored-transaction relayer, a client software development kit, and published cost benchmarks.
What they said: "Confidential settlement is the thing regulated institutions have been asking for and couldn't get without giving up compliance," said Remi co-founder and chief executive officer A. Tony Amer. "The Stellar Community Fund's backing lets us close that gap."
The signal: The grant is a modest one, landing in the lower half of comparable funding events. But it points to growing demand for privacy that satisfies regulators — a gap Remi is betting institutions will pay to close as it moves the system from testnet towards mainnet.
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
